Taxcloud stopped working

-- HikaShop version -- : 3.5.0
-- Joomla version -- : 3.8.10
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : 7.0.30

For some reason TaxCloud has stopped working. No transactions are showing up in their system reporting any longer. We have had it working fine for over a year. The last transaction that made it through to taxcloud was on 5/4/18. However, we have had many many transactions since then. Tax is calculating in checkout fine. Congifuration has not changed. Any idea why this would happen?

Hi,

On our end, the last patch that we made on the TaxCloud plugin dates from October 2017 where we fixed several problems with the support of variants.
Besides that, the code of the plugin didn't change since then.
First thing to do is to activate the debug setting of the plugin and do a test purchase and see what you get displayed (var_dumps added to the pages) and what is logged in the "payment log file" when the payment is notified.
That should give valuable information as to why the transactions are not arriving at TaxCloud.
It could be a server issue. It could be the TLS restrictions increased by TaxCloud (if any ?) and the server openSSL not updated to support the latest TLS.
It could also be that the plugin access is not "public" anymore or is unpublished and because of that, it isn't triggered by Joomla anymore.

Did you add anything to the shipping/order-complete process around May 4? Nothing has changed on our side, but if some other mechanism was introduced that interrupts the Captured API call, then that would hide completed transactions from our reports. Q: Are lookups still giving back tax amounts?
Thanks

Thank you. Where do I enable debug for the plugin? I looked in the taxcloud plugin and did not see any debug config options.

Hi,

Sorry. I forgot it was a hidden parameter for the TaxCloud plugin.
You can edit the file plugins/hikashop/taxcloud/taxcloud.php and change the line:
protected $debug = false;
to:
protected $debug = true;

Thank you. This is what I received after completing a transaction:

object(stdClass)#3888 (3) { ["ResponseType"]=> string(5) "Error" ["Messages"]=> object(stdClass)#3885 (1) { ["ResponseMessage"]=> object(stdClass)#3884 (2) { ["ResponseType"]=> string(5) "Error" ["Message"]=> string(68) "Cart Item Index 118111 is too large. The index cannot exceed 32,767" } } ["CartItemsResponse"]=> object(stdClass)#3881 (0) { } }

Hi,

Thank you that really helps.
This explains why the taxes are still calculated properly on the checkout but the taxes are not sent to TaxCloud.
In the code of the plugin, the system bases itself on the order_product_id of the product in the order (in the table hikashop_order_product to set the index). The advantage of doing that is that when a refund is done, or a product is removed from the order, HikaShop can update TaxCloud about the change for the products in the order concerned based on that order_product_id.
In the checkout, this is not necessary and thus the plugin simply uses a number incremented (1, 2, 3, 4... etc) for each new request.

And so it worked fine until the order_product_id auto increment reached 32767 (meaning that more than 32767 products were purchased on the website, which is something we didn't test and didn't thought it would be a problem).

So I've worked on a patch for that.
To apply it, it requires 3 things:
- install the install package provided in this post
- add the column order_product_params with the type "TEXT" in the table hikashop_order_product via your phpmyadmin
- add the code: before the line: in the file administrator/components/com_hikashop/classes/order.php

This will be added in HikaShop 3.6.0 as we can't add new columns to the database structure with new builds and we need to wait for a new release to add that.

Make sure you let us know how it goes. If you have any issue, let us know so that we can fix it.

Thank you. Applied the patch, added the row in the database and edited the file. Still getting an error:

object(stdClass)#3838 (3) { ["ResponseType"]=> string(5) "Error" ["Messages"]=> object(stdClass)#3835 (1) { ["ResponseMessage"]=> object(stdClass)#3834 (2) { ["ResponseType"]=> string(5) "Error" ["Message"]=> string(68) "Cart Item Index 120607 is too large. The index cannot exceed 32,767" } } ["CartItemsResponse"]=> object(stdClass)#3833 (0) { } }

Hi,

Did you also install the new TaxCloud plugin zip via the Joomla extension installer ?

Yes. Used the installer to apply the updated taxcloud plugin.
Updated administrator/components/com_hikashop/classes/order.php as you indicated
Added column order_product_params with the type "TEXT" in the table hikashop_order_product

Then I enabled the debug mode in the taxcloud plugin and ended up with the same error.

Would you like access to the website to check? I just tested it again with the taxcloud debug mode (in case it was some sort of cache issue). But the error is still there after the changes.

This is causing a growing administrative issue by the day. We will need to manually add all the transactions by hand to taxcloud (currently over $30,000 worth of transactions for just this month).

You help is greatly appreciated.

Hi,

Yes, we'll need a backend access and a FTP access to look at the issue because I'm not able to reproduce.
Please also provide instructions to be able to easily reproduce the problem.
You can send all that via our contact form along with a link to this thread:
www.hikashop.com/support/contact-us.html

Access info and instructions have been submitted via the contact form. Please let me know if anything else is needed.

Hi,

I got your accesses but I'm not able to access your FTP account. I'm getting the error:
monosnap.com/file/mMMi3mQOMYgsLhreiHVdAV1j4c3tVI
Could you please double check the credentials you sent ?

The backend access worked fine.

Just sent you an updated FTP login and tested it was working. Please let me know if anything else is needed.

Hi,

Thanks, it worked.
So I was able to check your changes. I saw that the modification in class.order was done, but the taxcloud plugin still had the old code for some reason.
I've replaced manually the file with the new version.
You can still find the old version at /plugins/hikashop/taxcloud/taxcloud_old.php if you need to revert.

Please have a try. The change should definitely help.

For some reason, your change to the taxcloud.php file broke the checkout. I started getting reports of a 404 page after the payment step in checkout. I confirmed the issue and we had to restore the backup file.

Would you please take another look? But, please, do a test order after the change. Use the employee free shipping and payroll deduction as the payment method when you test. We have a lot of people use this site daily. Errors like this cause an immediate customer support issue.

Thank you,
Dustin

Eager to see this resolved.
Please let us know if we can help in any way.

Hi,

We'll, I've reviewed the code and I don't see why it would generate an error, even more so a 404. I would understand a 500 error or fatal error, but I don't see why it would be a 404.
I wanted to try to reproduce the issue and do tests on your website but each time I try, I don't get any taxes added on the cart during the checkout. I've tried several addresses. So I don't know why. Maybe I need to select some specific product or use some specific address.

Could you either provide precise instructions to reproduce the issue or do the tests yourself ( replace the file with the one from the install package, turn on the debug in the plugin, turn on the debug mode and error reporting of Joomla, do a test, and check the payment log and the PHP error log and provide the information and behavior your get (which is basically was I wanted to do ) ) ?

We had several people run into the issue. Including myself, my support tech and one of the leads in the Marketing department. As soon as we rolled back the taxcloud.php file it stopped. The specific error printed on the 404 page was "Call to a member function Quote() on null"

Please do the following after 5pm CST today. That is after our daily peak traffic for the website.

1) Rename "taxcloud.php" to "taxcloud_new.php" and then rename "taxcloud.php" to the "taxcloud_bak.php".

2) All items seem to produce the error. But you can specifically test with the following:
L217_58_5 (ladies fleece jacket)

3) Use this as the shipping address (employee free shipping):
89 E Towne Mall, Madison, WI 53704 (I've added it as the default address for the tempadmin account for you)

4) Use Payroll deduction for the payment method.

5) Checkout to see the error.

Once you are complete with your test and you cannot fix the error please reverse the change so users can continue to purchase items.

Thank you,
Dustin