Altering item data from store_order_item_add hooks (_start or _end)

Question

I'm not sure if is deliberate, but the way hooks have been implemented in Exp:resso Store don't seem to allow the modification of data?

Using pass by reference has no effect (because of EE's hook calling approach?); any changes made to the data passed in the params is not available in the same variables in the hook calling method.

And there doesn't seem to be any point returning data from the extension method because there is no assignment in the Order model's addItem method, where the hook is called.

Are the hooks designed to expose data for reading-only? If I have to start hacking the Store logic code to add an assignment, or messing about modifying the records in the database, then the likelihood of functionality breaking with an update is high.

I'm disappointed this type of situation wasn't envisioned by the module developers. Why limit the hooks like this?

Answer 1

I have often used store_order_item_add_end to modify product attributes. $item is an object, and pass by reference does indeed work in this context.

So this code in your extension should change every item's price to $20:

$item->price = '20.00';

I have several sites doing this for items which I have javascript-driven price configurations for, and for which I want to confirm server-side to protect from being artificially modified in the browser.

Answer 2

What Store hook are you using? You can definitely modify Store data using an extension. Did you try using $order->save() ?

For example

public function store_order_complete_start($order)
{   

    // Save some custom data on the order
    $order->order_custom4 = $my_custom_data;
    $order->save();

    return $order;
}