Release Specific Upgrade Considerations

This document lists things you may wish to take into account as you upgrade. This includes:

• changes to the database schema or contents which deserve special notice
• changes to basic template operation

Note: Please be sure to also check Template Updates.

ALL Versions

• Part of staying up to date is monitoring not just your Zen Cart version, but all your other software dependencies, such as JavaScript. Use a tool like Google Chrome Lighthouse to find outdated JavaScript libraries with known vulnerabilities.

• Another part of staying up to date is keeping your PHP version current. As you do this, you may need to address various common issues with PHP version incompatibility.

• Be sure external links are constructed with rel="noreferrer noopener".

• If you use a custom template, check it against the template changes list.

• Do an accessibility review of your site. This is especially important if you use template other than Bootstrap, since many older templates were not built to be accessible.

Zen Cart 2.1.0 🛑 NOT RELEASED YET 🛑

• Improvements were made to the encapsulated plugin manager to permit storefront plugins to do more. If you need to backport these changes to 2.0.1 or 2.0.0 (say, to run POSM on those versions), see https://gist.github.com/lat9/9deb64d3325081d18bb0db5534bcf142.
• tpl_{product-type-page}_display.php files have been consolidated. If you use product types other than “product general” and require special behavior for a specific product type, you will need to override the appropriate file.
• Additional image matching rules may (optionally) be enforced more strictly; see this page. This behavior can be controlled via the configuration value ADDITIONAL_IMAGES_MODE in Admin > Configuration > Images.
• The NOTIFY_GET_PRODUCT_DETAILS notifier has been deprecated in favor of NOTIFY_GET_PRODUCT_OBJECT_DETAILS, which uses different arguments. Any use of the former will product a deprecation debug log.
• If you are using a template other than Bootstrap or Responsive Classic, you may need to update the template_info file to add the uses_mobile_sidebox_settings entry.
• If you are using a template other than Bootstrap or Responsive Classic, you may wish to use the /includes/modules/ezpages_mobile.php file to build your mobile menu. See this PR.

Zen Cart 2.0.x

• The way product sort order is interpreted has changed - see Sort Order. If you are upgrading from an older version and still have an alphanumeric value in Sort Order Default - Product Listing, update it to a numeric value, as shown in Sort Order Options. Note that this field was formerly called “Display Product Listing Default Sort Order.”

• The Mobile Detect library has changed, so if you have plugins or custom code that uses it, you must change it from:

if (!class_exists('Mobile_Detect')) {
  include_once(DIR_WS_CLASSES . 'Mobile_Detect.php');
}
$detect = new Mobile_Detect;

to

if (!class_exists('MobileDetect')) {
    include_once(DIR_WS_CLASSES . 'Mobile_Detect.php');
}
$detect = new Detection\MobileDetect;

• Shipping Dimensions are now part of product data. Users of the “Canada Post” and “Numinix Product Fields” plugins should be aware that the field products_ready_to_ship has been renamed product_ships_in_own_box, and the zc_install upgrade script will do the rename for you.
• The load order of all extra folders is now done alphabetically. Prior to this, file system order was used.
• This release modifies the configuration of the Specials/New/All/Featured pages so that they all use the same settings that the product listing pages do. See New/Featured/All Listing Configuration Settings. Note: this means the menu items “All Listing,” “New Listing” and “Featured Listing” under the Configuration Menu are no longer there; go to the Configuration > Product Listing menu instead.
• This release removes all the admin product-type files from the core. For example, in admin/includes/modules/product_music/, the following files have been removed: copy_product_confirm.php, copy_product.php, delete_product_confirm.php, update_product.php. You may still override product type specific files if you wish by simply copying the base file to the product-type directory. See admin/includes/modules/HOW_OVERRIDES_WORK_HERE.txt in the distribution.
• This release deprecates the older files that were used prior to the creation of admin_html_head.php in Zen Cart 1.5.7. Please see Admin head content for details.
• This release updates FontAwesome from version 4 to version 6. A number of class names have been changed between those two versions, and the Zen Cart core has been updated to use these newer names. For backwards compatibility, however, the FontAwesome v4 shim is being loaded. Loading the shim is a feature that can be disabled using the Admin site specific override file or the Storefront site specific override file.

Zen Cart 1.5.8 and Zen Cart 1.5.8a

• Zen Cart 1.5.8 still runs on PHP 7.3 and 7.4 but was created for PHP 8+. PHP8 is a major change from PHP7, and many plugins will require work before they are usable. Work with the community and your developer to be sure any modifications you make are ready for PHP 8. See Upgrading plugins to work with 1.5.8/PHP 8.0+.

• Subsequent to the release of 1.5.8a, a change was made to PHP which caused carts to white screen with the log message PHP Fatal error: Uncaught IntlException: datefmt_create: invalid locale: U_ILLEGAL_ARGUMENT_ERROR.

• A new file, includes/init_includes/init_non_db_settings.php, was introduced. Defined constants which are not language specific were migrated out of language files into this file.

• Most “functions” (both admin and non-admin) have been consolidated into files located in /includes/functions/. Some have been merged together. Some changes are listed below. This change was done to eliminate the duplication of identical (or nearly identical) functions between the storefront and admin that was present in prior releases.

• Some functions have been renamed. Zen Cart 1.5.8a will provide aliases for these functions so that the old names will still work, but will create a deprecation log. (To fix the log, change the function call from using the old name to the new name.)

  Old Name	New Name
  zen_draw_products_pull_down	zen_draw_pulldown_products
  zen_draw_products_pull_down_attributes	zen_draw_pulldown_products_having_attributes
  zen_draw_products_pull_down_categories	zen_draw_pulldown_categories_having_products
  zen_draw_products_pull_down_categories_attributes	zen_draw_pulldown_categories_having_products_with_attributes
  zen_get_orders_status	zen_get_orders_status_pulldown_array

• Language files were changed to a new format. See Developer Information on Array based Language files for more details. If you are upgrading, you may wish to consider doing only the basic language file customizations rather than port all the changes you had from prior releases. Core language files must be overridden in the new format to prevent PHP Warnings; plugin language files may use the old or the new file format.

• Because of the changes to language files, additional steps will need to be taken if you are trying to create global variables. In prior releases, defining a new variable in a language file was sufficient; now you will need to explicitly global it:

  $GLOBALS['some_variable'] = $some_variable;
  

• Because of the changes to language files, significant language string related changes were made to the template file tpl_gv_faq_default.php. If your template has overridden this file, you will need to update it.

• The function zen_parse_search_string input parameters have been reversed. Plugins that use this function will require modification.

• The function zen_get_countries returns different array keys than previously. Admin plugins that use this function may use the new admin function zen_get_countries_for_admin_pulldown.

• The function zen_cfg_read_only has been added. This means any plugin authors who provided their own version of this function should remove it from their plugin for 1.5.8, or wrap it in if (!function_exists('zen_cfg_read_only')) if support is needed for older versions of Zen Cart.

• The misspelled notifier NOTIFIY_ORDER_CART_SUBTOTAL_CALCULATE has been deprecated and replaced by NOTIFY_ORDER_CART_SUBTOTAL_CALCULATE. Code that references the misspelled notifier will continue to work (due to the event aliasing feature), but plugins should be updated to use the corrected name.

• The constant ROBOTS_PAGES_TO_SKIP was previously located in the language file meta_tags.php despite not being language-related.
  It has been moved to its own file in /includes/extra_configures/robots_pages_to_skip.php.

• The notifier NOTIFY_OT_COUPON_USES_PER_USER_CHECK had its arguments changed. See includes/modules/order_total/ot_coupon.php.

Plugin pages that do not require indexing (such as Back In Stock subscribe/unsubscribe) should be added to the list in the constant definition.

Zen Cart 1.5.7

• The configuration constant UPLOAD_FILENAME_EXTENSIONS was removed from the database and replaced with an entry in includes/classes/upload.php. If you have modified this constant from its original setting of jpg,jpeg,gif,png,eps,cdr,ai,pdf,tif,tiff,bmp,zip you will want to add a custom define (in a new file) in both your /includes/extra_configures/ and YOUR_ADMIN/includes/extra_configures/ directories to set all the allowed extensions you want to support site-wide.

• Internal changes necessitated removing the following inclusions from admin/includes/auto_loaders/currency_cron.core.php:

  • class.base.php
  • init_file_db_names.php
  • init_database.php

  If you have created additional cron jobs and used this file as a base, please apply the 1.5.7 changes to your custom files.

• The database field products_description.products_viewed has been deprecated. It will be deleted in a future release. Product view tracking is now done using the table count_product_views.

• External links have been updated to use rel="noopener" or rel="noreferrer noopener". If you use external links (for social networking, manufacturer sites, product URLs, etc.) you should update your template to adopt this practice.

• The shopping_cart page no longer uses TEXT_INFORMATION from the shopping_cart.php language file. You will need to move the content of that define to the new html_includes/YOURTEMPLATE/define_shopping_cart.php page.

• A number of constants which were unused by the core were removed from language files. If you use a plugin which relied on these defines, you should expect a PHP Notice in your /logs folder. To resolve this, define the needed constants in a plugin specific file or an override, as appropriate. Some of the defines removed are DATE_FORMAT_SHORT and DATE_TIME_FORMAT, which some plugins may have used even though core Zen Cart code does not.

• The Display Logs plugin is now built-in. If you had its files installed in prior versions, remove all those files as part of your upgrade. Then if you want to enable the plugin simply go to Admin > Modules > Plugins.

• The Admin Login as Customer plugin, which allowed you to login on a customer’s behalf, is now built-in. If you had its files installed in prior versions, remove all those files as part of your upgrade, and configure as described on the Place Order help page.

• The login form built by includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_login_default.php was changed so that the id and class are both loginForm, rather than login, as in prior releases. This is important since a direct reference to loginForm is made in includes/modules/pages/login/on_load_main.js.

Zen Cart 1.5.6

• The variable $downloads, returned from includes/modules/downloads, changed from a query result to an array. The following template files had to be updated to accommodate this change:

  • tpl_modules_downloads.php
  • tpl_account_history_info_default.php (possibly)

  You will want to adjust any copies of these files in your template to process an array rather than a database query.

• The table containing the EZ-Pages data (ezpages) was split into two tables, ezpages and ezpages_content. This was done in order to add multi-language capabilities. Accordingly, any files (template overrides or custom files) which reference the ezpages table will need adjustment to account for this division.

• Date format updates began in this release - see date standardization.

Zen Cart 1.5.5

• The second argument to $db->perform was expanded. In Zen 1.5.4 and below, the field name was the key, and the field value the array value

$sql_data_array['customers_gender'] = $customers_gender;

Now the keys have no significance and each array value is self-describing:

$sql_data_array[] = array('fieldName'=>'customers_gender', 'value'=>$customers_gender, 'type'=>'stringIgnoreNull');

• The arguments for the notifier NOTIFY_ORDER_AFTER_SEND_ORDER_EMAIL were changed. This necessitated a code change in the observers watching for it.

• The responsive_classic template was introduced in this release. If you are coming from an older release with an older template, be sure to check and verify that your template performs properly on mobile devices. If not, you can use Responsive Classic or select another responsive template.

• Starting in this version, the email css was pulled out of the individual templates into a shared file called email/email_common.css. If you are creating or updating email templates, you should follow this new practice.

• The phpBB object was removed.

Zen Cart 1.5.2

• The list of pages created by includes/modules/pages/header_php.php changed from a query result to an array. So the template file includes/templates/YOURTEMPLATE/templates/tpl_page_default.php had to be updated to accommodate this change.

Zen Cart 1.5.0

• The admin menus are no longer built by files ending in .dhtml. Instead, a new database table called admin_pages was introduced. Mods which create their own menu entries must also follow this convention. Guidelines for upgrading plugins to 1.5 include instructions on this step.

Coding Help:

• PHP Errors, Warnings and Deprecated messages after upgrading
• PHP Idioms
• Release Specific Upgrade Considerations
• Upgrading plugins to work with 1.5.8/PHP 8.0+

… and when all else fails:

• PHP migration guides in the php.net documentation