Variant Tracking Bug - StoneEdge and AbleCommerce

[JaminLeather]

I need help tracking down a bug that occurs when updating quantity on hand for inventory variants between Stone Edge Order Manager and AbleCommerce. Strictly speaking this is a bug with Stone Edge, unfortunately I am being told it will be at least two weeks before their developers can even begin looking into it.

In the Stone Edge interface script below, they are cycling through the products in AbleCommerce and then attempting to cycle through each variant. (Note: I have removed all but the relevant parts from this code sample.)

Code: Select all

01 Dim colProducts As CommerceBuilder.Products.ProductCollection
02 Dim objProduct As CommerceBuilder.Products.Product
03 Dim colVariants As CommerceBuilder.Products.ProductVariantCollection
04 colProducts = CommerceBuilder.Products.ProductDataSource.LoadForStore()
05 For Each objProduct In colProducts
06     colVariants = objProduct.Variants
07     For Each objVariant In colVariants  // *** This is the problem right here ***
08         //Do Some Processing
09     Next
10 Next

The problem occurs in line 07. Stone Edge assumes this line will return every variant for a product. However, this method (which appears to pull data from the ac_productVariants table) ONLY returns a list of variants with a quantity on hand greater than zero. If a variant has a quantity on hand of zero, this is no record in the ac_procuctVariants table and the method adds no variant to the collection.

For all intents and purposes, if a variant does not have a quantity on hand, Stone Edge does not realize it exists.

I am currently on AbleCommerce Verision 7.0.5.14053. According to Stone Edge support, this issue does not exist in version 7.0.4. I have no way of testing this older version, but if that is true, something was changed in the AbleCommerce ProductVariantCollection method that Stone Edge uses.

My questions are these. Did this indeed work correctly in 7.0.4? If so, what changed in the ProductVariantCollection method and was it an intentional design change or an over site? How does the ProductVariantCollection method work in 7.0.6? Does it return all variants or only the ones with a positive quantity on hand?

Incidentally, this is a way to way to return all variants (regardless of quantity) using ProductVariantManager, but it would require Stone Edge to do some major rewrites to their script. If including a code snippet with this "fix" below. (It's in C# because that's what I know.)

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ProductVariantManager _VariantManager = new ProductVariantManager(ProductId);
for (int i = 0; i < _VariantManager.Count; i++)
{
    ProductVariant variant = _VariantManager.GetVariantByIndex(i);
    //Do Some Processing
}

Thanks in advance for the help! I am mainly looking for something I can send back to Stone Edge to try and get resolution. We just purchased their software because of their integration with AbleCommerce and the inability to track inventory with a zero quantity on hand strikes me as a significant problem.

[JaminLeather]

Here is the latest information I have from Stone Edge regarding this problem.

We use the AbleCommerce API, not their tables directly. The behavior seen is correct behavior. We do not build variants in the absence of a variant. We take whatever the shopping cart gives us.

They have blamed this problem on AbleCommerce. Does anyone from AbleCommerce have a suggestion on what I should do next?

[Shopping Cart Admin]

They have blamed this problem on AbleCommerce.

Which broken feature of AbleCommerce is being blamed for this issue?

[JaminLeather]

They are using CommerceBuilder.Products.ProductVariantCollection to return the list of variants. However in AbleCommerce Verision 7.0.5.14053 this only returns variants with a quantity on hand. If the variant quantity is zero, it is not returned. According to Stone Edge, this behavior is new to the 7.0.5 version.