Store isn't adding products to the cart

Question

I'm building a VERY simple store setup to demonstrate its capabilities to a client. I setup a quick and dirty EE site, added Structure, Wygwam and Store. EE and all the add-ons are current versions. I then created my field types, my product channel, and linked the two. I added a store home page in Structure and told it to use the store_example/index template. I added a single product then went to the site. So far so good. I went to the product page, clicked on add to cart and nothing appears in the sidebar cart after the page reloaded. Is there some step I've missed or a reason why my add to cart button wouldn't work?Remember, these are the default templates that are installed with Store, I haven't changed anything other then that main navigation on top. and linked to a common bootstrap.css file.

UPDATE: I'm not sure how relevant this is but I started looking at other Store examples on the web and I noticed that the exp:store:product tag was outputting a form tag with an action. Mine is missing the action parameter for some strange reason.

UPDATE 2: .htaccess file contents:

# remove index.php
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^(ACT=.*)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

# EE 404 page for missing pages
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php/site/404

# remove www
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The removal of index.php is from the documentation for Structure and has worked for all sites I've ever built with it. The 404 was added recently due to EE not working without it. I never could figure out why. The removal of www is commented out because this is a test site.

Commenting out the removal of index.php and updating my $config['site_index'] does work but I'd like to be able to remove index.php from the URLs.

Answer 1

The 404 line is almost certainly the problem. I've seen this a couple times before now.

Basically Apache is treating every page load as a 404 and sending it through to ExpressionEngine. At this point EE sees the URL and displays the page you expect. While this works well enough for most pages, it also happens to destroy any POST data, which is why no products are added to your cart. It's more of an accident that your site is working at all, and you should really try to avoid this situation.

Rule of thumb: Never use ErrorDocument 404 in an ExpressionEngine htaccess file. It does more harm than good, and masks the underlying issue.

You should always start by testing only the official htaccess method:

RewriteEngine On

# Removes index.php from ExpressionEngine URLs
RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

Note you should leave out the <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> lines, because all they do is hide errors when mod_require isn't enabled (and it's much better to know about this problem than to spend hours trying to figure out why rewrite isn't working, trust me).

It doesn't look like you're using it, but for the record, always avoid NSM Htaccess Generator, it often breaks form submissions (precisely because it adds an ErrorDocument 404 line like you have used above). Also always start from the smallest htaccess possible, then add back in lines as necessary (I've seen people with htaccess files 3 pages long wondering why their site isn't working).

If the official htaccess isn't working, try changing the RewriteRule line to one of these:

• RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]
• RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]
• RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
• RewriteRule . index.php [L]

If that still doesn't work, try changing the $config['uri_protocol'] setting in config.php. I find PATH_INFO or ORIG_PATH_INFO work more often than not on stubborn servers:

$config['uri_protocol'] = 'ORIG_PATH_INFO';

Finally, if none of those suggestions work, it's probably time to start talking to your web host - often they have much better knowledge of how their servers are configured (alternatively, find a host with a more standard setup).

Answer 2

I experienced the same problem and it was related to the .htaccess file. That would be the place to investigate.