Registration Closes Too Soon

[tshore]

The expected behaviour for a registration type is that it should be available until midnight on the closing date. However, it seems to be unavailable for the entire closing date (ie. from 00:00 on). Now, I have done some customization to the registration process, so there is a possibility that I mucked this up, but I don't think so. I think the problem is that, although the closing date is stored in the DB with the time (ie. 2010-04-15 23:59:59), when it's retrieved by:

$registrationType->getClosingDate() in templates/registration/selectRegistrationType.tpl

only the date part gets returned (ie. 2010-04-15). I think the same problem would happen with registration options as well. I've been battling this problem all the way back to OCS 1.x. Where we don't have the problem anymore is with the abstract submission closing date. This date is retrieved with a different mechanism than the closing dates for registration types/options.

The function getClosingDate appears in:

classes/registration/RegistrationType.inc.php
classes/registration/RegistrationOption.inc.php

And these both call getData('closingDate').

I hacked together a pretty sad fix in templates/registration/selectRegistrationType.tpl

Code: Select all

      {assign var="closeDateNoTime" value=$registrationType->getClosingDate()}
      {assign var="notQuiteMidnight" value=' 23:59:59'}
      {assign var="closeDateWithTime" value=$closeDateNoTime$notQuiteMidnight}

and then, in any comparison containing $registrationType->getClosingDate(), I replaced it with $closeDateWithTime. Of course, I should've fixed it in the class file, but I couldn't figure out how to do that.

I didn't fix it for the registration options. I'll just make sure that the dates are set so that we don't run into problems with this.

[jmacgreg]

Hi Trudy,

I've replicated in a clean copy of OCS, and have filed this as a bug. Please see http://pkp.sfu.ca/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=5324, and feel free to CC yourself for future updates.

Cheers,
James

[tshore]

Any chance of a patch for this? I was surprised to see that it wasn't fixed in 2.3.3.

[jmacgreg]

Hi Trudy,

2.3.3 wasn't a broad release -- it was released to address a handful of specific issues (including, primarily, one security issue -- see this page for details). The good news is that with OJS 2.3.3 out the door, we'll be returning attention to OCS, and will be planning a more comprehensive release in the next few months which will hopefully include a fix for this issue.

Cheers,
James

[tshore]

I can't believe that this bug has bitten me yet again. What a huge waste of time...

[michael]

Hi Trudy,

The expected behaviour for a registration type is that it should be available until midnight on the closing date. However, it seems to be unavailable for the entire closing date (ie. from 00:00 on). Now, I have done some customization to the registration process, so there is a possibility that I mucked this up, but I don't think so. I think the problem is that, although the closing date is stored in the DB with the time (ie. 2010-04-15 23:59:59), when it's retrieved by:

$registrationType->getClosingDate() in templates/registration/selectRegistrationType.tpl

only the date part gets returned (ie. 2010-04-15). I think the same problem would happen with registration options as well. I've been battling this problem all the way back to OCS 1.x. Where we don't have the problem anymore is with the abstract submission closing date. This date is retrieved with a different mechanism than the closing dates for registration types/options.

The function getClosingDate appears in:

classes/registration/RegistrationType.inc.php
classes/registration/RegistrationOption.inc.php

Thanks for the detailed breakdown of the issue. A fix will be included as part of the upcoming OCS 2.3.4 release. Additional details and fix for existing installations is included in the bug report.

Cheers,
Michael

[tshore]

Thanks Michael.

[tshore]

I don't think it was fixed in 2.3.4!!!

My early registrations were supposed to close at midnight tonight. However, it seems as if they closed at midnight last night. This is the exact same bug that I've been struggling with for YEARS. You might notice that I've posted in this thread in 2010 and 2011.

Here's what needs to be fixed. Please, please, please patch it and include it in the next release.

In classess/registration/RegistrationTypeDAO.inc.php, in the function returnRegistrationTypeFromRow(), you need to change lines 254-256 from:

Code: Select all

$registrationType->setOpeningDate($this->dateFromDB($row['opening_date']));
$registrationType->setClosingDate($this->dateFromDB($row['closing_date']));
$registrationType->setExpiryDate($this->dateFromDB($row['expiry_date']));


to:

Code: Select all

$registrationType->setOpeningDate($this->datetimeFromDB($row['opening_date']));
$registrationType->setClosingDate($this->datetimeFromDB($row['closing_date']));
$registrationType->setExpiryDate($this->datetimeFromDB($row['expiry_date']));


Thank you.

[asmecher]

Hi tshore,

A similar change was committed about 6 months ago (see https://github.com/pkp/ocs/commit/645122f2071ab099baf074e23bd3c1422830220b). This will be released very shortly with OCS 2.3.5. Note that the call to dateFromDB should not be changed for setOpeningDate.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

[tshore]

Oh, I see what you mean re:

Note that the call to dateFromDB should not be changed for setOpeningDate.

I thought that the opening dates were in the form YYYY-MM-DD 00:00:00, but I see that all of the dates end in 23:59:59.