Price-Alterer Field appears to be very useful, but I almost gave up on it because I couldn't see how to use it, even after having read the RTF README.txt.

I wasted about 3 hours trying to "debug" it, when it turned out to not really be a bug. I'm hoping I might help someone else from going through this same pain.

What I did:

  • Install the module
  • Enable it
  • Go to my product content type
  • Add a "Price alterer field".
  • Go to node/add/product, to try out my new field.
  • Become alarmed that I can't see it there. And herein lies my problem: I thought that this was a field in the sense that every other field is a field: As a place where you get to type something, which drupal then does something with. I was expecting to get to type my discounted price into this field. I thought that each product would have a "regular" price, which the ubercart module supplies, and a "discounted" price (which I'm using for members/logged-in users), which this module supplies. But about that I was WRONG.
  • I then spent too long inserting debugging code to figure out why this field wasn't rendering on my node/add and node/edit pages.
  • Finally, realise that it doesn't actually put anything on those pages.

Attention newbies of Product Price Alterer Field: This is not a regular field. It is just a place-holder, which you can insert and position amongst the other real fields on your "admin/content/types/product/fields" page. On a rendered node, it will display a value (the discounted price) there, much like a normal field. But when you are editing or creating a node, there is nothing to see there at all.

The price itself is determined by adding a new discount which doesn't require a coupon-code. For example, in my case I set it up so that users with the "authenticated" role would get a certain amount off. Then, anyone who is logged sees this new price when viewing the rendered product node. (As opposed to the olden days before the price-alterer field, when they'd see just the undiscounted price, and then only when they are checking out would they see any discounts they might have been eligible for.)

Can someone please update the README.txt to clarify this?

Comments

asb’s picture

asb CreditAttribution: asb commented

I totally second that. The lack of any usefull documentation is just annoying. At least, there should be some documentation a) how this module and it's components interact, and b) under which conditions it can (not) be used.

From what I have figured so far is that 6.x-2.x-dev seems to be incompatible with any VAT calculation; this would make the module totally useless for all countries in the EU.

Also I have not even started to understand what uc_discounts_alt is supposed to do. If I enable the "Price alterer field", I get the following calculations:

Example 1: Active discount of type "Percentage off". Value in discount field: "5". I guess it should shave off 5% from the selling price. What it acually does: Selling price is "4.599€", "Discounted Price" is: " -15.459€" WTF?

Example 2: Active discount of type "Fixed amount off per qualifying item". Value in discount field: "200". I guess it should shave off 200 Euro from the selling price. What it acually does: Selling price is "4.599€", "Discounted Price" is: " 3.665€" WTF?!

From what I understand from testing this module is that it is either totally incompatible with the environment I'm running, or it's calculations are just rubbish. Without any clear and concise documentation, there is no point in using it - unless you want to get sued or go bankrupt.