Today is a special day. Today I’m very excited to share finally… a release candidate for CoCart v2.1 that has been months in the works and finally gets to see the light of day.

This release is a major milestone with many improvements. You have asked and been patient, now you shall receive. Support for guest customers.

Guest Customers

The long awaited feature is now available with the help of a new session handler. This session handler runs only during a CoCart API request meaning a guest customer will not have it’s cart items shared across between your web store and app.

Carts are stored for 30 days in the database and expired carts are cleared within a 6 hour window twice a day. Should there be an empty cart, they are set to expire within 6 hours. This helps reduce database overload.

Each session is now unique. No more shared carts.

There are also two methods of support for guest customers. By cookie or manually setting a unique cart key. The choice is yours.

Product Validation

I have introduced new product handlers for when a product is being added to the cart as well as better validation methods. I have also introduced similar filters that are in the core of WooCommerce that will allow 3rd Party plugins or official WooCommerce extensions to include their product validations with ease.

With this improvement I have also added a minor validation for variable products to which they can not be added without a variation ID. This will be improved further over the next releases.

I have also made sure you can not add an external product by mistake.

Transfer Cart

A new requested feature is also available and that is to be able to transfer a cart from your headless store to the web store in order for your customers to checkout and pay for their order.

This helps those who are not using a payment gateway API such as Stripe to create orders and take payment within the app.

All responses are now filterable ?

Not all responses were filterable before. Now for each API request you get a successful or an error response, you can filter the response to change what they say or return. This allows for developers to have more options with their development.

Totals are automatically recalculated ?

To improve customer interaction and development requirements, the cart totals are recalculated once an item has been added to the cart or an item in the cart has been updated.

This was not the case before as I was matching how WooCommerce handle the cart on the front-end which was not beneficial via an API and users were getting confused a lot about the totals not updating so now you don’t have to.

API Improvements

Because of the session changes made, if you are adding items to the cart via the web and then try to view the cart via the API via the browser, it will return blank.

The front-end and the API are two separate areas now in order to fully support sessions for guest customers. This is the same even if you are logged in.

I have also introduced a debug logging system to record the events of each request. This is only enabled via a filter.

<?php
add_filter( 'cocart_logging', function() { return true; });

Some code structure improvements have also been made in order to allow extending the API better, tested with WooCommerce v4.1 and this coming release will now require that you have version 5.0 of WordPress installed and PHP version 7 minimum.

The minimum version of WooCommerce required is now v3.6. This is to insure the code is kept up to date with latest changes in WooCommerce and secure.

Stats ?

As of writing this post, 79.3% of the plugin user base is now using version 2 which is fantastic.

The remaining user base is split across 2 versions. Version unknown is 6.3% and Version 1 still around 14.5%.

How do I test?

Simply download and install the release candidate below, follow the work in progress documentation and report back to me if you come across a bug or have any questions.

I’m aiming to have v2.1 released on 8th May, 2020 unless another release candidate is required before then so get testing.

P.S. If you haven’t already joined the community I recommend that you do and also take a look at the public roadmap to view what’s in development and what could be coming next.

Changelog for this release

• NEW: Added support for guest customers.
• NEW: Carts in session are stored in a new database table.
• NEW: Added plugin details to WooCommerce System Status.
• NEW: Added uninstall.php file to delete table and options.
• NEW: Able to transfer a cart from your headless store to the web.
• NEW: Added handlers to improve product validation and extended support for other product types.
• NEW: Can now add items to cart using a products SKU ID.
• NEW: When an item is updated, removed or restored… the cart totals are re-calculated.
• Removed: Parameter to re-calculate totals once item was updated.
• Tweaked: Products that are no longer purchasable and are already in the cart are removed from the cart.
• Tweaked: Stop redirect to getting started page if plugin was activated and was already installed before.
• Tweaked: Prevent redirect to getting started page if multiple plugins activated at once.
• Dev: Clear all carts stored in session via the Tools section of WooCommerce System Status.
• Dev: Cart expiration can be filtered if the default 30 days is not to your liking.
• Dev: Generated customer ID can be filtered before storing cart in the database and creates a cookie on the customer’s device.
• Dev: Added filter cocart_add_to_cart_validation to allow plugin developers to pass their own validation before item is added to the cart.
• Dev: Added filters to override the product name cocart_product_name and product title cocart_product_title when getting the cart contents.
• Dev: Added filter cocart_item_thumbnail_src to override the source URL of the product thumbnail when getting the cart contents.
• Dev: Added filter cocart_add_to_cart_quantity to override the quantity when adding an item.
• Dev: Added filter cocart_add_cart_item_data so other plugins can pass cart item data when adding an item.
• Dev: Added filters so the returned response messages can be changed.
• Dev: Added conditional filter for returning a cart item.
• Dev: Added hook cocart_user_switched to allow something to happen if a user has switched.
• Dev: Added hook cocart_load_cart to manipulate the merged cart before it set in session.
• Dev: Added hook cocart_load_cart_override to manipulate the overriding cart before it set in session.
• Dev: Added hook cocart_item_added_updated_in_cart or when an item was added again but updated in cart.
• Dev: Added a new class that handles logging errors.
• Dev: Added filters to admin notices to extend the length of time they hide.
• Tested: Compatible with WooCommerce v4.1