error: error setting certificate verify locations:
  CAfile: /bin/curl-ca-bundle.crt
  CApath: none

It turns out it’s just a problem with the path, all you need to do is reset this info and it should be alright:

git config --system http.sslcainfo /bin/curl-ca-bundle.crt

If you run got config -l you can check the git configuration to see exactly what all the settings are.

Related posts:

1. Magento Products Inc Tax Issue

While reworking a 1.3.2.3 magento template to work for magento 1.4, I had an issue on a product page where a tall thin image was not being resized correctly by the product zoom javascript. The script seemed to think that the image was small enough to fit inside the image container and so the image was not shrunk and the zoom in bar was disabled, despite the fact that around a third of the image was hidden behind the zoom bar itself.

Digging into it, it turns out that the width of an image is the main dimension used to calculate if the image is oversized or not. But as my image was tall and thin it was the hieght causing the problem and not the width.

I fixed this by simply amending the javascript in /js/varien/product.js.

In the scale function, which is around line 128, change the line that calculates the variable ‘oversize’ from this:

var overSize = (this.imageDim.width > this.containerDim.width && this.imageDim.height > this.containerDim.height);

to this:

var overSize = (this.imageDim.width > this.containerDim.width || this.imageDim.height > this.containerDim.height);

This makes sure that an image is marked as oversize if either the width or hieght exceed the container size, rather than both. Then in the if statement below, amend the first if from this:

if (this.imageDim.width > this.containerDim.width) {
     this.imageEl.style.width = (this.imageZoom*this.containerDim.width)+'px';
}

to this:

if (this.imageDim.width > this.containerDim.width) {
     this.imageEl.style.width = (this.imageZoom*this.containerDim.width)+'px';
} else if (this.imageDim.height > this.containerDim.height) {
     this.imageEl.style.height = (this.imageZoom*this.containerDim.height)+'px';
}

This then resizes the image based on the height of the image if the width is not the reason for the oversize.

Related posts:

1. Magento – using jQuery
2. Jquery .live and .livequery
3. Magento payment broken continue button

We recently upgraded a magento site to version 1.4.1.1 as part of moving the site to a new server. Everything seemed to run smoothly with no issues, job done.

However it didn’t take long for  the customer to ring up – ‘My site’s broken, no one can make payments anymore’. Once customer had entered their credit card details they found that the continue button did not work at all, they were stuck on the payment screen. Uh oh, time to dig around checking the server setups, looking for any reported issues with authorize.net (the payment engine being used) and checking into the changes made in the magento upgrade.

Amazingly the problem turned out to be that in latest version of magento, they had included a new javascript file for validating the payment variables input by the user and without this file the payment process would just stop at the card input screen and refuse to go any further.

The solution is simple. Just add the following line of code to your themes page.xml (in the layouts folder) and all should be fine:

<action method="addJs"><script>lib/ccard.js</script></action>

Everything would have been fine if we’d been using the default theme, or if we hadn’t had to override the default page.xml with our own version for our theme.

It just makes me wonder if there was some way that developers could be notified when key changes are made to files, especially to theme files that are overwritten in most installs to avoid such head scratching and long periods of debugging in the future. As far as I can tell this wasn’t even mentioned in the release notes. Do let me know if I’m wrong though and varien do actually release such useful information!

Related posts:

1. Magento – url functions
2. Magento – using jQuery
3. Introduction to Magento

Day Camp 4 Developers is an event aimed at all programmers regardless of your favoured language of use, as it focuses more on soft skills rather than specific technical ones (which I’m sure we all like to think we rock at anyway). Soft skills often get overlooked though, which is possibly foolish as they can be key factor affecting our career progression and ability to become a valued well-rounded team member.

I’ve heard most of the speakers speak before and can highly recommend them for their ability to present information in an interesting and engaging way. Even if you can’t watch them live on the day, the sessions will be available for you to watch anytime at your own convenience, so there’s really nothing to stop you!

Check out the sessions here and book here to reserve your place.

Related posts:

1. PHPNW09 write up

As I was displaying a list, I first assumed that in ie7 the element was adding in the default list margins and ignoring my css. However no amount of fiddling with adding css margins in the slideToggle callback function seemed to sort the problem.

Googling allowed me to find a solution here that worked, although I have no idea why it works.

Basically I needed to add a min-height of 0px on the parent element, and set the height of the ul that I was trying to display to 100%.

Problem sorted!

Related posts:

1. Jquery .live and .livequery
2. Magento – using jQuery
3. CSS firefox margins

A problem was reported where some stores appeared to be adding the tax twice in the shopping cart. The product prices had been setup including tax but the tax was then being added again in the cart, despite the tax settings in the admin clearly stating that the product prices already included tax and the cart subtotal should display excluding tax.

So for a moment I panicked thinking that this was going to be some overly complicated bug that I’d need to fix (not what I needed on a Friday).

So in a desperate effort to avoid that I looked around and fiddled with as many settings as I could think of, hoping that one of these would solve the problem, meaning that there was no horrible bug but just some obscure settings conflict. This was a good plan!

Although the tax calculation settings seemed to be correct, the ‘Default tax destination calculation’ was still set to the default country ‘USA’ so I changed this to the correct country for that particular store. I also changed the shipping origin under ‘Delivery settings’ to be the country rather than the default of ‘USA’ and this is what actually solved the problem.

I know this seems like a really simple thing, but hopefully it’ll save someone else a lot of searching around. I also thought I’d better post this incase I come across this problem again and can’t remember what I did to fix it last time! A blog can be a very useful memory tool!

Related posts:

1. PHP Rounding Issue
2. Magento – url functions
3. Introduction to Magento

Passing a float value of 14.875 (generated by a multiplier calculation) I was expecting the result 14.88 but was actually recieving 14.87. Reading around I know that there are a few issues and difficulties when it comes to dealing with float numbers, precision and rounding, though later versions of php may well handle these slightly better (on this project I’m using php 5.2.6, running on Ubuntu 4.6).

The easiest way that I found to get around the problem was to turn the number that I sent into round into a string, simply by concatenating an empty string on the end, eg round($value.”). I think that this then makes the value a simple string of 14.875 that can be easily rounded rather than a float that is susceptible to the nuances of precision rounding, though I’m really not an expert and simply speculating here.

This also may not be the best or most elegant way to sort this problem but it worked for me.

If you know of a better way to get around this then do please let me know, I’d be really interested to hear how other people have got around this issue.

Related posts:

1. Magento – product zoom for tall thin images

I work for a small company called Rendili, and you can find my article here.

I hope that it’ll prove useful, and if anyone wants to make any comments or add anything then please feel free to post your comments here on my personal blog.

Thank you!

No related posts.

Ada Lovelace

While in general I try to stay away from the whole gender debate surrounding these industries, I don’t think that anyone can deny that women form a very definite minority in these areas. There are a whole host of reasons for this, none of which I particularly want to go into and none of which are going to be that quick and easy to solve. But I believe that everyone has the ability and opportunity (however small) to help change mindsets, throw out the old stereotypes and encourage a more open and welcoming atmosphere.

In regards to today’s post, it can only be a good thing that women are being publicly recognised for the work that they do. This will hopefully lead to them being inspired to keep up with the good work and stand as encouragement for others just starting out or looking to join the profession. One day I hope that we won’t really need events like these as they’ll have served their purpose, and our industries will be freed from the stigma and issues that arise from having such a wide gender ratio.

I should also point out that throughout my time working as a developer, I have received a massive amount of help and support from both friends and colleagues, male and female, and I would really like to thank all of you! You’ve been brilliant!

But in the spirit of Ada Lovelace Day, I am going to highlight one person in particular who has helped me such a lot in past, both personally and professionally, and to whom I owe a great deal.

Lornajane

While many of you will already know Lornajane and all the great work that she does. For those of you who may be less familiar here’s a brief summary of just some of the things that she does:

By day she works as a senior developer and trainer for Ibuildings, as well as being the editor-in-chief of their techportal blog and heading up their PHP Centre of Expertise. In addition to her busy work schedule she is also rapidly gaining a reputation for being a great conference speaker, and as a glutton for punishment has also helped organise a number of these events. Check out her feedback ratings on joind.in, which by the way is a project she is also involved in. In between these larger talks, you can often find her speaking at various user groups and other smaller technology related events. And as if that all wasn’t enough, she is also a key member of PHP Women and works tirelessly aiming to move the group forward as well as give her personal encouragement and support to whoever needs it.

Believe me when I say that that was just a summary, and doesn’t even cover her other more personal passions such as crafting or netball that she also manages to find time for.

As it’s Ada Lovelace Day, her work with PHP Women should be particularly highlighted. PHP Women is a group that is open to both men and women but that aims to encourage and support women in particular that work (or would like to work) with PHP in whatever they can. There’s a forum, open source partnerships and a mentorship scheme among other things, and I know many people who have personally benefited from being a member. Groups like this would not be possible without the hard work put in by people like Lorna. Maybe now would be a good time to suggest helping them out by getting involved and giving back to the group yourself? This works for all groups, communities and networks – while it is great to receive help and support, is it not greater to be able to give your own help and support to others?

Lorna also aims to inspire others by her example. Her conference speaking did not start because she felt a huge desire to stand spotlit on a stage in front of lots of people. Rather she was aware that women are very often under represented in many conference schedules and if she really wanted to do something about that then the best way was to get up on stage herself as an example to others. This way she could also encourage others to do the same and offer advice based on her own experiences.

A real human dynamo, Lorna’s level of activity alone is often enough to inspire me to get off my arse and just do things! Personally she’s given me a huge amount of encouragement and support, ranging from quick comments and pep talks which really help when I’m feeling a bit down or overwhelmed, to letting me crash at her house during a particularly bad time when I had nowhere else to go.

I know I for one shall always be enormously grateful for all the help that she’s ever given me.

No related posts.

All I can say is that it’s testament to how busy I’ve been recently. I take quite a bit of time tweaking my blog posts until I am happy with them, so as a result I’ve got a few unpublished posts and some ideas that as yet are unwritten, but I just either don’t have the time to complete them or just can’t get my head into the right frame of mind for writing.

As such things have been a bit quiet around here recently.

However I shall be taking the opportunity to hopefully kickstart everything again tomorrow, as it’s Ada Lovelace Day.

I meant to take part in this last year but couldn’t quite get everything up together in time. I shall be joining in this year though to help celebrate the contributions and achievements of women in science and technology.

Will you?

Related posts:

1. Rendili Web Writing Tips