[bop-devel] deficiencies in BOP modules/standard

[Ivan Kohler]

On Sun, Dec 03, 2006 at 07:26:07PM -0800, Jo Rhett wrote:
> I hope the subject doesn't offend anyone.  Not the point, just listing 
> things that are missing from BOP.

I'm certainly not offended.  I picked up B:OP as an existing module and 
am thrilled to see other folks interested in helping to continue 
development, evolve the interface, etc.

> 1. Result text = most payment providers return text for successful 
> results as well as error results.  Shouldn't there be a single field 
> which includes this text?  All of our modules supplied this, and more of 
> our customers used it than I expected.

Sure.  In general I think we need to start maintaining a proper master 
list of input and output fields rather than continue with the current ad 
hoc "I saw AuthorizeNet or some other module use this field" allocation, 
before any worse incompatibilites arise than the cvv stuff Phil pointed 
out.

> 2. Raw sent/receive data.  For debugging purposes it is nice to see the 
> data sent and the result returned.  Right now you have to go and edit 
> the BOP provider module to get this.  AuthorizeNet will give you the raw 
> reply, but not the raw submission.

I'm not sure this is always applicable, but yes, I agree that when there 
is this raw data, it should be available in a standard fashion.

A "raw result hash" of processor name/value pairs would also be a good 
thing to have a standard method to return (parsing any transport XML or 
whatnot, but otherwise returning processor data).  This is something the 
Interchange developers have requested.

> 3. LinkPoint -- why are you using their very broken lpperl.pm instead of 
> re-implementing it in a standardized fashion?

Because I needed to get something up and running to process 
transactions, quick'n'dirty notwithstanding.  :)  I think I've actually 
ported some earlier work against lperl.pm to lpperl.pm, if that lets you 
know how long its been that I haven't really been able to spend time on 
it.

> lpperl is broken no matter 
> how often you report the bugs to them.  And seriously, a library should 
> never output text to standard output.  The LinkPoint module should 
> behave like a proper library...
>    * I guess I'm signing up to fix this.

You are more than welcome to work on B:OP:LinkPoint if you have the 
desire.  Hell, perhaps I can even swindle you into^W^W^Wallow you the 
privledge of taking over maintenance of the module.  :)

-- 
_ivan