VQmod for OpenCart 2.0

DSGI wrote:Hey Jay -

I've tired to use VQmod locally on my 2.0 install with PDO but everything breaks when installing VQmod on V2.0, do you have plans to make VQmod compatible with 2.0? Any timeframe on that?

Thanks!

DSGI

As Jay says, you should wait till the final stable OpenCart 2.0 before doing any upgrades of live sites.

For the brave ones, we have a modified version of the new OpenCart modification system (file admin/controller/extension/modification.php) to try out. It includes support for the VQmod 2.4.1 XML syntax.

Besides all the excellent points brought up in this thread, another elephant in the XML room:

File based VQ means you have control over render order by adding naming prefixes and sorting numbers. DB based means what...? Is there sort order in ocMOD? Also, will VQmod or ocMOD run first in the parse schema? The latter will always be "most powerful" and if that latter is the sort-less latter, its gonna be a mess.

I brought this up with Dan via a thank you email but i never got a reply. I hope to god he is gonna put sort/prioritization on that system. There are far too many folks making mods with disregard for other folks mods. Often a re-sort solves it to put it either before or after a conflicting mod.

I also hopes he takes the advice of standardized info file and ZIP structure (a la Drupal) for the sake of uninstall locations, naming schema, versioning etc. This would help a TON here in the extension market, and would help get people to list known dependencies, compatibilities, or conflictions, a changelog, as well as offer the omg please EXTENSION VERSIONING. As it stands, who knows when the last time some of these folks mods were updated, its just a name with no versioning anywhere.

And yes i agree, JS is better much of the time for theme side hackery. The fact you cant gracefully target a "container", close a container, nor add an attribute/class/id (without liability) is a huge missing link in all mod engines for OC. Nothing against you Q or J, both systems are totally sweet, its just the nature of theme side req ya know? The container.

Yeah we understand where you are coming from. In those instances, it has to be JS that solves it. Adding too much complexity to searching etc would be a nightmare performance wise so its finding a happy balance between function and performance that we try and achieve

Yah man, im def not complaining about container target, totally 100% appreciate all you guys' work into the system. Its damn cool

Dhaupin wrote:Yah man, im def not complaining about container target, totally 100% appreciate all you guys' work into the system. Its damn cool

Your points are some of the reasons why I published the Override Engine as an alternative, to allow the user to modify controller, model and most library classes in an object oriented way, rather than using a dynamic source code modification as is the case with VQmod or OCmod.

All these modifications systems still struggle when it comes to modifying HTML templates as you rightly pointed out. I have been looking at various PHP-based XHTML and XML parsers, so has rph, as that would be a better way to modify the DOM. Of course this would require clean validated HTML5, which not always the case for various template files.

JNeuhoff wrote: Your points are some of the reasons why I published the Override Engine as an alternative, to allow the user to modify controller, model and most library classes in an object oriented way, rather than using a dynamic source code modification as is the case with VQmod or OCmod.

All these modifications systems still struggle when it comes to modifying HTML templates as you rightly pointed out. I have been looking at various PHP-based XHTML and XML parsers, so has rph, as that would be a better way to modify the DOM. Of course this would require clean validated HTML5, which not always the case for various template files.

I like OE more, but honestly ive yet to start using it live like our store is already demanding because every dev and his grandmother are using VQ, therefore every our-fix-tweak and its tweak-grandmother we must do in that VQ file too. Really the only annoying part about non-container/attrib targets is wrapping elements in the theme, which isnt thaaaaaaat huge of a deal like some themers make it out to be. Well commented + offset VQ can pull it off if youre careful.

Short of some kinda insane server side JS hook, im not sure there is a solid solution to HTML container targeting aside from putting the class= or id= target logix into existing XML solutions. Even then they fall short (cant edit CSS LESS or JS right?) so i think its as simple as "a cheetah painted jaguar is still a jaguar" or something ancient witty along those lines

Why is Daniel not contributing to this thread?

dmsims wrote:Why is Daniel not contributing to this thread?

Why would he? He has his own built in "ocmod" script in 2.0 and he has nothing to do with 3rd party mods.

Just a quick update. I've successfully added vQmod support for 2.0 in the same way it was originally used. This will apply vQmods after ocmod changes have been added, so vQmod gets applied last. This will be available in the upcoming 2.5.0 release. If anyone want's to have a preview/beta test of this, feel free to PM me for the files

JNeuhoff wrote:I have modified the admin/controller/extension/modification.php (OpenCart master branch) to support VQmod 2.4.1 compatible XML for modifications and tested it with some XML files. In case anybody is interested, get the file from here.

I have tried, but it is not working. Do you forget 1 file maybe? you said earlier modification.xml. but i have downloaded but only 2 files inside

I have tried, but it is not working.

Can you be more specific please? What exactly have you done? It work's just fine on my OC2 test server.

JNeuhoff wrote:

I have tried, but it is not working.

Can you be more specific please? What exactly have you done? It work's just fine on my OC2 test server.

I am sorry my bad. I just notice that .xml file should be .vqmod.xml

Great mods. Thanks

Have other developers been sticking with vQmod for OpenCart 2.0? OCMod has a lot of issues right now so I'm not quite sure how to proceed with updating mods.

When it comes time to upgrade (not bothering at the minute) then I will be sticking with vQmod personally. I realise I have a biased input but it's still far better than OCMod and from the opinion of others there's still too many problems with OCMod finding patterns, despite claims by Daniel it's just perfect...

rph wrote:Have other developers been sticking with vQmod for OpenCart 2.0? OCMod has a lot of issues right now so I'm not quite sure how to proceed with updating mods.

Yes..... Some of us have wildly complicated extensions that were basically rendered useless for 2.0 It will be a while before even considering ocmod. vQmod is a good and working platform. Why change it. It should have been part of OpenCart many moons ago. It's like replacing a v-8 engine with a 4 cylinder.

I would switch to OCmod except that for now it's just wasted development time. vQmod 2.5+ works fine on OpenCart 2.0, so I'd rather save myself some time when trying to update dozens and dozens of extensions for all the other changes required for 2.0.

If I have some free time in the future, I may look into updating mine to use OCmod. For the present, though, there's no real reason (in my opinion) if you already have a vQmod file created.