TOPIC: Sorry for the checkout bug at td.events today

Hey folks. I'm Doug Martin (Jeff's brother) and I built the td.events site.

I'd like to apologize for the checkout bug some patrons encountered at td.events today -- some patrons had their checkout automatically abort with an error message that read the "slot quantities do not match up".

This not very helpful message was from a broken tripwire test in checkout that was added late in the beta testing. The test was there to ensure that the number of tickets the user wanted to purchase was not more than the total number of tickets reserved for the slot (a separate denormalized count of reserved tickets per slot is maintained to speed the slot search). The broken test looked likewhen if should have been
There is also code in the add to cart that also does an extensive set of tests to ensure we maintain consistency in the database but I wanted a backup tripwire to ensure we didn't oversell slots. The bug crept in due to a combination of it being added late in the beta testing when we didn't have multiple users trying to get the same slot and no unit test coverage since the code was (in my mind) double checking other carefully constructed and tested code in the add to cart system. Its kind of ironic that I introduced a bug with code meant to check to ensure there wasn't a bug.

Again, sorry for any inconvenience or aggravation I might have caused. I hope you have a great time at Origins 2018!

Thanks for getting it fixed so quickly!

Wade Schwendemann wrote: Thanks for getting it fixed so quickly!

Agreed. The unexpected happens from time to time, but a quick response is very much appreciated.

Thanks Doug for the quick resolution.

1. Can you look into why this event shows the following td.events/conventions/origins-2018/slots/482
Total tickets: 10
Available tickets: 0
Tickets in carts: 0
Purchased tickets: 5

2. Minor suggestion to increase the cart timer from 30 minutes. For comparison, Gen Con uses 2 hours. That is a little more forgiving in case issues do arise. Even issues that aren't your fault such as purchaser's credit card being declined.

@Jeff312: thanks for the heads up - I've fixed the available ticket count for that slot.

...I'm sending you the bill for my next month's blood pressure pills...