edan_f0/docs/source/releases/v0.8.rst

=======================
Oscar 0.8 release notes
=======================

.. warning::

   Since v0.8 has not been released yet, these release notes are still a work-in-progress.

Welcome to Oscar 0.8!

Table of contents:

.. contents::
    :local:
    :depth: 1

.. _compatibility_of_0.8:

Compatibility
-------------

This release adds support for Django 1.7. Per our policy of always supporting
two versions of Django, support for Django 1.5 has been dropped.

This release also adds full Python 3.3 and 3.4 support. But due to South
not supporting Python 3, Python 3 support is only supported in combination
with Django 1.7 and it's new migration framework.

.. _new_in_0.8:

What's new in Oscar 0.8?
------------------------

Explicit differentiation of child, parent and stand-alone products
------------------------------------------------------------------

In some edge cases, it was difficult to decide whether e.g. a product is a
parent product (previously known as group product) without children or a
stand-alone product (which never has children). To make that distinction
easier, a ``structure`` field has been introduced on the ``AbstractProduct``
class. In that process, naming for the three different product structures
has been altered to be:

    - A stand alone product. Regular product that lives by itself.
    - A parent product. It essentially represents a set of products.
      Previously also known as group product.
    - A child product. All child products have a parent product. They're a
      specific version of the parent. Previously known as product variant.

Some properties and method names have also been updated to the new naming. The
old ones will throw a deprecation warning.

Better handling of child products in product dashboard
------------------------------------------------------

Together with the changes above, the dashboard experience for child products
has been improved. The difference between a parent product and a stand-alone
product is hidden from the user; a user can now add and remove child products
on any suitable product. When the first child product is added, a stand-alone
product becomes a parent product; and vice versa.
In the front-end, the old name of "product variants" has been kept.

Customisation just got easier!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Oscar's views are now dynamically imported. This means that they can be
  overridden like most other classes in Oscar; overriding the related
  Application instance is not necessary any more.

* A new management command, ``oscar_fork_app``, has been introduced to help
  with the all-to-common pattern of forking an Oscar app to override one of
  it's classes.

* The documentation around :doc:`/topics/customisation` has been given an
  overhaul to incorporate the changes.

Django 1.7 support
------------------

Oscar 0.8 comes with support for Django 1.7 out of the box. The app refactor
and the new migration framework are both great improvements to Django. Oscar
now ships with sets of migrations both for South and the new native
migrations framework.
Unfortunately, the changes in Django required a few breaking changes when
upgrading Oscar both for users staying on Django 1.6 and for users upgrading to
Django 1.7 at the same time. These are detailed in the section for
backwards-incompatible changes.

Dashboard for weight-based shipping methods
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is a new dashboard for weight-based shipping methods. It isn't enabled by
default as weight-based shipping methods are not enabled by default. To add it to
the dashboard menu, include this snippet in your ``OSCAR_DASHBOARD_NAVIGATION``
setting:

.. code-block:: python

    OSCAR_DASHBOARD_NAVIGATION = [
        ...
        {
            'label': _('Shipping charges'),
            'url_name': 'dashboard:shipping-method-list',
        },
        ...
    ]

You'll also need to modify your shipping repository class to return weight-based
shipping methods.

US demo site
~~~~~~~~~~~~

To help developers building sites for the US, a new example Oscar site has been
included in the repo. This customises core Oscar to treat all prices as
excluding tax and then calculate and apply taxes once the shipping address is
known.

See :ref:`us_site` for more information.

Faceting for category browsing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If Oscar is running with a Solr-powered search backend, the category browsing now offers faceting
(e.g. filter by price range, or product type).
This is implemented via a new ``SearchHandler`` interface, which will eventually replace the
tight coupling between Haystack and Oscar. It therefore paves the way for better support for
other search engines.

Reworked shipping app
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Several parts of the shipping app have been altered. The most important change is a
to the API of shipping methods to avoid a potential thread safety issue.
Any existing Oscar sites with custom shipping methods will need to adjust them
to confirm to the new API. The new API and the other changes are detailed below.

See the
:ref:`backwards incompatible changes <incompatible_shipping_changes_in_0.8>`
for the shipping app and the
:doc:`guide to configuring shipping </howto/how_to_configure_shipping>`
for more information.

Basket additions clean-up
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The forms and views around adding things to your basket has been vigorously
reworked. This cleans up some very old code there and ensures variant products
are handled in a consistent way.

The changes do require changing the constructor signature of the
``AddToBasketForm`` - the details are documented in the
:ref:`basket_app_changes`.

Checkout improvements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The checkout process now skips payment if the order total is zero (e.g. when
ordering free products or using a voucher). As part of that, checkout views
now evaluate *pre-conditions* (as before) and newly introduced
*skip conditions*. This should make customising the checkout flow easier.

Out with the old, in with the new
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lots of methods deprecated in the 0.6 release have now been removed.
Specifically, the partner "wrapper" functionality is now gone. All price and
availability logic now needs to be handled with strategies.

.. _minor_changes_in_0.8:

Minor changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* The ``OSCAR_CURRENCY_LOCALE`` setting has been removed. The locale is now
  automatically determined from the current language. This ensures prices are
  always shown in the correct format when switching languages.

* The login and registration view now redirects staff users to the dashboard
  after logging in. It also employs flash messages to welcome returning and
  newly registered users.

* The basket middleware now assigns a ``basket_hash`` attribute to the
  ``request`` instance. This provides a hook for basket caching.

* The tracking pixel now also reports the Oscar version in use. This was
  forgotten when adding tracking of the Python and Django version in 0.7.
  Total information collected now is the versions of Django, Python and Oscar.

* ``OSCAR_SLUG_FUNCTION`` now accepts both string notation and a callable.

* The default templates now allow the order status to be changed on the
  dashboard order detail page.

* The forms for the order dashboard views are now loaded dynamically so they
  can be overridden.

* Introduced a ``OSCAR_DELETE_IMAGE_FILES`` settings which makes deleting
  image files and thumbnails upon deleting of a model with an ``ImageField``
  optional. It usually is desired behaviour, but can slow down an app when
  using a remote storage.

* Oscar now ships with a ``oscar_populate_countries`` management command to
  populate the country databases. It replaces the ``countries.json`` fixture.
  The command relies on the ``pycountry`` library being installed.

* It is now possible to use product attributes to add a relation to arbitrary
  model instances. There was some (presumably broken) support for it before,
  but you should now be able to use product attributes of type ``entity`` as
  expected. There's currently no frontend or dashboard support for it, as there
  is no good default behaviour.

* Oscar has a new dependency, django-tables2_. It's a handy library that helps
  when displaying tabular data, allowing sorting, etc. It also makes it easier
  to adapt e.g. the product list view in the dashboard to additional fields.

* ``jquery-ui-datepicker`` has been replaced in the dashboard by
  bootstrap-datetimepicker_. We still ship with ``jquery-ui-datepicker`` and
  ``JQuery UI`` as it's in use in the frontend.

* ... and dozens of bugs fixed!

.. _django-tables2: http://django-tables2.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
.. _bootstrap-datetimepicker: http://www.malot.fr/bootstrap-datetimepicker/

.. _incompatible_changes_in_0.8:

Backwards incompatible changes in 0.8
-------------------------------------

Migrations
~~~~~~~~~~

* South is not a dependency of Oscar anymore: This means it won't get installed
  automatically when you install Oscar. If you are on Django 1.6 and want to
  use South, you will need to explicitly install it and add it to your
  requirements.
* Only South >= 1.0 is supported: South 1.0 is a backwards compatible release
  explicitly released to help with the upgrade path to Django 1.7. Please make
  sure you update accordingly if you intend to keep using South. Older versions
  of South will look in the wrong directories and will break with this Oscar
  release.
* Rename your South ``migrations`` directories: To avoid
  clashes between Django's migrations and South's migrations, you should rename
  all your South migrations directories (including those of forked Oscar apps)
  to ``south_migrations``. South 1.0 will check those first before falling back
  to ``migrations``.
* Upgrading to new-style migrations: If you're upgrading to Django 1.7, you
  will need to follow the `instructions to upgrade from South`_ for your own
  apps. For any forked Oscar apps, you will need to copy Oscar's initial
  migrations into your emptied ``migrations`` directory first, because Oscar's
  set of migrations depend on each other. You can then create migrations for
  your changes by calling ``./manage.py makemigrations``. Django should
  detect that the database layout already matches the state of migrations; so
  a call to ``migrate`` should fake the migrations.

.. _instructions to upgrade from South: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/topics/migrations/#upgrading-from-south

Product structure
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Generally, backwards compatibility has been preserved. Those changes are
unavoidable:

* You now need to explicitly set product structure when creating a product;
  the default is a stand-alone product.
* The related_name for child products was altered from ``variants`` to
  ``children``. A ``variants`` property has been provided (and will throw a
  deprecation warning), but if you used the old related name in a query lookup
  (e.g. ``products.filter(variants__title='foo')``, you will have to change it
  to ``children``.
* Template blocks and CSS classes have been renamed.

The following methods and properties have been deprecated:

* ``Product.is_parent`` - Use ``is_group`` instead.
* ``Product.is_variant`` - Use ``is_child`` instead.
* ``Product.is_top_level`` - Test for ``is_standalone`` and/or ``is_parent`` instead.
* ``Strategy.fetch_for_group`` - Use ``fetch_for_parent`` instead.
* ``Strategy.group_[pricing|availability]_policy`` - Use
  ``parent_[pricing|availability]_policy`` instead.
* ``Strategy.select_variant_stockrecords`` - Use
  ``select_children_stockrecords`` instead.

Furthermore, CSS classes and template blocks have been updated. Please follow
the following renaming pattern:

* ``variant-product`` becomes ``child-product``
* ``product_variants`` becomes ``child_products``
* ``variants`` becomes ``children``
* ``variant`` becomes ``child``

Product editing
---------------
The dashboard improvements for child products meant slight changes to both
``ProductCreateUpdateView`` and ``ProductForm``. Notably, ``ProductForm`` now
gets a ``parent`` kwarg. Please review your customisations for compatibility
with the updated code.

.. _incompatible_shipping_changes_in_0.8:

Shipping
~~~~~~~~

The shipping method API has been altered to avoid potential thread-safety
issues. Prior to v0.8, shipping methods had a ``set_basket`` method which
allowed a basket instance to be assigned. This was really a crutch to allow
templates to have easy access to shipping charges (as they could be read
straight off the shipping method instance). However, it was also a
design problem as shipping methods could be instantiated at compile-time
leading to a thread safety issue where multiple threads could assign a basket
to the same shipping method instance.

In Oscar 0.8, shipping methods are stateless services that have a method
:func:`~oscar.apps.shipping.methods.Base.calculate` that takes a basket and
returns a ``Price`` instance.  New :doc:`template tags </ref/templatetags/>` are
provided that allow these shipping charges to be accessed from templates.

This API change does require quite a few changes as both the shipping method
and shipping charge now need to be passed around separately:

* Shipping methods no longer have ``charge_excl_tax``,
  ``charge_incl_tax`` and ``is_tax_known`` properties.

* The :class:`~oscar.apps.order.utils.OrderCreator` class now requires the
  ``shipping_charge`` to be passed to ``place_order``.

* The signature of the :class:`~oscar.apps.checkout.calculators.OrderTotalCalculator` 
  class has changed to accept ``shipping_charge`` rather than a
  ``shipping_method`` instance.

* The signature of the
  :func:`~oscar.apps.checkout.session.CheckoutSessionMixin.get_order_totals` 
  method has changed to accept the ``shipping_charge`` rather than a
  ``shipping_method`` instance.

Another key change is in the shipping repository object. The
``get_shipping_methods`` method has been split in two to simplify the exercise
of providing new shipping methods. The best practice for Oscar 0.8 is to 
override the ``methods`` attribute if the same set of shipping methods is
available to everyone:

.. code-block:: python

    from oscar.apps.shipping import repository, methods

    class Standard(methods.FixedPrice):
        code = "standard"
        name = "Standard"
        charge_excl_tax = D('10.00')


    class Express(methods.FixedPrice):
        code = "express"
        name = "Express"
        charge_excl_tax = D('20.00')

    class Repository(repository.Repository):
        methods = [Standard(), Express()]
        
or to override ``get_available_shipping_methods`` if the available shipping
methods if only available conditionally:

.. code-block:: python

    from oscar.apps.shipping import repository

    class Repository(repository.Repository):
        
        def get_available_shipping_methods(
                self, basket, shipping_addr=None, **kwargs):
            methods = [Standard()]
            if shipping_addr.country.code == 'US':
                # Express only available in the US
                methods.append(Express())
            return methods

Note that shipping address should be passed around as instances not classes.

Other potentially breaking changes related to shipping include:

* Weight based shipping methods used to have an ``upper_charge`` field which was
  returned if no weight band matched. That doesn't work very well in practice,
  and has been removed. Instead, charges from bands are now added together to
  match the weight of the basket.

* The :class:`~oscar.apps.order.utils.OrderCreator` class no longer defaults to
  free shipping: a shipping method and charge have to be explicitly passed in.

* The ``Base`` shipping method class now lives in ``oscar.apps.shipping.methods``.

* The ``find_by_code`` method of the shipping ``Repository`` class has been
  removed as it is no longer used. 

* The parameters for
  :func:`oscar.apps.shipping.respository.Repository.get_shipping_methods`
  have been re-ordered to reflect which are the most important.

* The legacy ``ShippingMethod`` name of the interface of the shipping app has
  been removed. Inherit from ``shipping.base.Base`` for the class instead, and
  inherit from ``shipping.abstract_models.AbstractBase`` for model-based
  shipping methods.

* ``oscar.apps.shipping.Scales`` has been renamed and moved to
  ``oscar.apps.shipping.scales.Scale``, and is now overridable.

* The models of the shipping app now have abstract base classes, similar to
  the rest of Oscar.

* The legacy ``ShippingMethod`` name of the interface of the shipping app has
  been removed. Inherit from ``shipping.base.Base`` for the class instead, and
  inherit from ``shipping.abstract_models.AbstractBase`` for model-based
  shipping methods.


Email address handling
----------------------

In theory, the local part of an email is case-sensitive. In practice, many
users don't know about this and most email servers don't consider the
capitalisation. Because of this, Oscar now disregards capitalisation when
looking up emails (e.g. when a user logs in).
Storing behaviour is unaltered: When a user's email address is stored (e.g.
when registering or checking out), the local part is unaltered and
the host portion is lowercased.

.. warning::

   Those changes mean you might now have multiple users with email addresses
   that Oscar considers identical. Please use the new
   ``oscar_find_duplicate_emails`` management command to check your database
   and deal with any conflicts accordingly.

Django 1.7 support
------------------

If you have any plans to upgrade to Django 1.7, more changes beyond
addressing migrations are necessary:

* You should be aware that Django 1.7 now enforces uniqueness of app labels.
  Oscar dashboard apps now ship with app configs that set their app label
  to ``{oldname}_dashboard``.
* If you have forked any Oscar apps, you must add app configs to them, and
  have them inherit from the Oscar one. See the appropriate section in
  :doc:`/topics/fork_app` for an example.
* Double-check that you address migrations as detailed above.
* Django now enforces that no calls happen to the model registry during
  app startup. This mostly means that you should avoid module-level calls to
  ``get_model``, as that only works with a fully initialised model registry.

Misc
~~~~

* The ``oscar_calculate_scores`` command has been `rewritten`_ to use the ORM
  instead of raw SQL. That exposed a bug in the previous calculations,
  where purchases got weighed less than any other event. When you upgrade,
  your total scores will be change. If you rely on the old behaviour,
  just extend the ``Calculator`` class and adjust the weights.

* ``Order.order_number`` now has ``unique=True`` set. If order numbers are
  not unique in your database, you need to remedy that before migrating. By
  default, Oscar creates unique order numbers.

* ``Product.score`` was just duplicating ``ProductRecord.score`` and has been
  removed. Use ``Product.stats.score`` instead.

* Oscar has child products to model tightly coupled products, and
  ``Product.recommended_products`` to model products that are loosely related
  (e.g. used for upselling). ``Product.related_products`` was a
  third option that sat somewhere in between, and which was not well supported.
  We fear it adds confusion, and in the spirit of keeping Oscar core lean,
  has been removed. If you're using it, switch to
  ``Product.recommended_products`` or just add the field back to your
  custom Product instance and ``ProductForm`` when migrating.

* The ``basket_form`` template tag code has been greatly simplified. Because of
  that, the syntax needed to change slightly.

  Before: ``{% basket_form request product as basket_form single %}``

  After: ``{% basket_form request product 'single' as basket_form %}``

* Product attribute validation has been cleaned up. As part of that, the
  trivial ``ProductAttribute.get_validator`` and the unused
  ``ProductAttribute.is_value_valid`` methods have been removed.

* The ``RangeProductFileUpload`` model has been moved from the ranges
  dashboard app to the offers app. The migrations that have been naively
  drop and re-create the model; any data is lost! This is probably not an
  issue, as the model is only used while an range upload is in progress. If
  you need to keep the data, ensure you migrate it across.

* ``oscar.core.loading.get_model`` now raises a ``LookupError`` instead of an
  ``ImportError`` if a model can't be found. That brings it more in line with
  what Django does since the app refactor.

* ``CommunicationEventType.category`` was storing a localised string, which
  breaks when switching locale. It now uses ``choices`` to map between the
  value and a localised string. Unfortunately, if you're using this feature
  and not running an English locale, you will need to migrate the existing
  data to the English values.

* Support for the ``OSCAR_OFFER_BLACKLIST_PRODUCT`` setting has been removed.
  It was only partially supported: it prevented products from being
  added to a range, but offers could be applied to the products nonetheless.
  To prevent an offer being applied to a product, use ``is_discountable`` or
  override ``get_is_discountable`` on your product instances.

* ``Category.get_ancestors`` used to return a list of ancestors and would
  default to include itself. For consistency with get_descendants and to avoid
  having to slice the results in templates, it now returns a queryset of the
  ancestors; use ``Category.get_ancestors_and_self`` for the old behaviour.

.. _rewritten: https://github.com/tangentlabs/django-oscar/commit/d8b4dbfed17be90846ea4bc47b5f7b39ad944c24

Basket line stockrecords
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The basket line model got a reference to the stockrecord in Oscar 0.6. The
basket middleware since then updated basket lines to have stockrecords if
one was missing. If any lines are still missing a stockrecord, we'd expect them
to be from from submitted baskets or from old, abandoned baskets.
This updating of basket lines has been removed for 0.8 as it incurs additional
database queries. Oscar 0.8 now also enforces the stockrecord by making it
the ``stockrecord`` field of basket ``Line`` model no longer nullable.

There is a migration that makes the appropriate schema change but, before that
runs, you may need to clean up your ``basket_line`` table to ensure that all
existing null values are replaced or removed.

Here's a simple script you could run before upgrading which should ensure there
are no nulls in your ``basket_line`` table:

.. code-block:: python

    from oscar.apps.basket import models
    from oscar.apps.partner.strategy import Selector

    strategy = Selector().strategy()

    lines = models.Line.objects.filter(stockrecord__isnull=True):
    for line in lines:
        info = strategy.fetch_for_product(line.product)
        if line.stockrecord:
            line.stockrecord = info.stockrecord
            line.save()
        else:
            line.delete()

* The ``reload_page_response`` method of 
  :class:`~oscar.apps.dashboard.orders.views.OrderDetailView`
  has been renamed to ``reload_page``.

.. _basket_app_changes:

Basket app changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- The ``basket:add`` URL now required the primary key of the "base" product to
  be included. This allows the same form to be used for both GET and POST
  requests for variant products.

- The ``ProductSelectionForm`` is no longer used and has been removed.

- The constructor of the :class:`~oscar.apps.basket.forms.AddToBasketForm` has
  been adjusted to take the basket and the purchase info tuple as parameters
  instead of the request instance (c74f57bf_ and 8ba283e8_).

.. _c74f57bf: https://github.com/tangentlabs/django-oscar/commit/c74f57bf434661877f4d2d2259e7e7eb18b34951#diff-d200ac8746274e0307f512af886e1f3eR148
.. _8ba283e8: https://github.com/tangentlabs/django-oscar/commit/8ba283e8c4239e4eff95da5e8097a17ecfadf5f5

Migrations
~~~~~~~~~~

.. warning::

    The catalogue app has a data migration to determine the product structure.
    Please double-check it's outcome and make sure to do something similar
    if you have forked the catalogue app.

.. note::

    The migration numbers below refer to the numbers of the South migrations.
    Oscar 0.8 ships with a set of new initial migrations for Django's new
    native migrations framework. They include all the changes detailed below.

.. note::

    Be sure to read the detailed instructions for
    :doc:`handling migrations </topics/upgrading>`.

* Address:

    - ``0011`` - ``AbstractAddress.search_text`` turned into a ``TextField``.
    - ``0012`` - ``AbstractCountry``: Removed two unused indexes & turns numeric code into ``CharField``

* Catalogue:

    - ``0021`` - Add ``unique_together`` to ``ProductAttributeValue``,
      ``ProductRecommendation`` and ``ProductCategory``
    - ``0022`` - Remove ``Product.score`` field.
    - ``0023`` - Drop ``Product.related_products``.
    - ``0024`` - Change ``ProductAttributeValue.value_text`` to a ``TextField``
      and do entity attribute changes and model deletions.
    - ``0025`` & ``0026`` - Schema & data migration to determine and save Product structure.

* Offer:

    - ``0033`` - Use an ``AutoSlug`` field for ``Range`` models
    - ``0034`` - Add moved ``RangedProductFileUpload`` model.

* Order:

    - ``0029`` - Add ``unique_together`` to ``PaymentEventQuantity`` and ``ShippingEventQuantity``
    - ``0030`` - Set ``unique=True`` for ``Order.order_number``
    - ``0031`` - ``AbstractAddress.search_text`` turned into a ``TextField``.

* Partner:

    - ``0014`` - ``AbstractAddress.search_text`` turned into a ``TextField``.

* Promotions:

    - ``0006`` - Add ``unique_together`` to ``OrderedProduct``

* Ranges dashboard:

    - ``0003`` - Drop ``RangeProductFileUpload`` from ``ranges`` app. This is
                 a destructive change!

* Shipping:

    - ``0007`` - Change ``WeightBand.upper_limit`` from ``FloatField`` to ``DecimalField``
    - ``0008`` - Drop ``WeightBased.upper_charge`` field.

.. _deprecated_features_in_0.8:

Removal of deprecated features
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These methods have been removed:

* ``oscar.apps.catalogue.abstract_models.AbstractProduct.has_stockrecord``
* ``oscar.apps.catalogue.abstract_models.AbstractProduct.stockrecord``
* ``oscar.apps.catalogue.abstract_models.AbstractProduct.is_available_to_buy``
* ``oscar.apps.catalogue.abstract_models.AbstractProduct.is_purchase_permitted``
* ``oscar.apps.catalogue.views.get_product_base_queryset``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.is_available_to_buy``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.is_purchase_permitted``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.availability_code``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.availability``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.max_purchase_quantity``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.dispatch_date``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.lead_time``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.price_incl_tax``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.abstract_models.AbstractStockRecord.price_tax``

These classes have been removed

* ``oscar.apps.partner.prices.DelegateToStockRecord``
* ``oscar.apps.partner.availability.DelegateToStockRecord``