WooCommerce activation design flaw

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PhuongM

New member
XLS Padlock support/developer team,

I successfully have got the kit installed and up running smoothly. Now I started to test to see how it behaves.
I started with the setting for maximum number of runs limitation in the file MainController.php, say 3. Everything looks fine, the EXE stops beautifully when I exceed the maximum number of runs set in the controller and asks for renewing the activation code.
It works exactly I want, however funny things happened - I put the current should-be-expired token into the EXE and activate. It works again!!! Each time I exit and restart the EXE, it always tells me that the activation key has expired. Enter that should-be-expired stuff into the EXE, it doesn’t hesitate to accept it!!!

Oh no, this behavior is definitely not what I want. Trying to manually remove the order in the WooCommerce doesn’t help. This token now is a permanently key to access the workbook.

I believe that I may have to manually block users to prevent them from free riding, however this is definitely not what I expected from an automated tool.

Haven’t tried the max valid days yet as I can’t wait until tomorrow to see how it works, but I guess the same behavior likely happens.

Not sure how the setExpireDate works, but I reckon that with this design, it doesn’t make sense. For example, if I set a fixed date there, all expiry dates of different customers would expire at the same day! Hope that I’m wrong.

Am I missing something?

Beside of the above issue, there is another issue relevant to the design of the kit. From my logic, the variables setMaxRuns, setMaxDays, setExpireDate and setShowNagScreen in the MainController.php are working as global variables which impact all customers’ orders regardless they are on permanent, subscription or trial licences. Can you somehow put them locally to separate customers’ orders?
 
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PhuongM said:
It works exactly I want, however funny things happened - I put the current should-be-expired token into the EXE and activate. It works again!!! Each time I exit and restart the EXE, it always tells me that the activation key has expired. Enter that should-be-expired stuff into the EXE, it doesn’t hesitate to accept it!!!
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It’s the activation key that expires, the token doesn’t. Entering the token again will ask the server for another activation key and so on. So, you must block the activation in WooCommerce if you don’t want that.

You could automate the blocking with WooCommerce API extensions or by modifying our PHP code so that the token is automatically blocked after a key request. That’s also why we provide the full source code, you can easily tweak and make modifications, provided that you know PHP.
 
Golfer65 said:
Following this…support can you please elaborate on this please thank you
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See our woocommerce user guide, it tells you how you can achieve this.
Golfer65 said:
Thats another $129 purchase
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Not necessary an extension to purchase. WooCommerce has a lot of APIs you can call from PHP code. Thta’s what we do in the woocommerce activation kit.
 
XLSPadlock support,
I have gained just enough server and PHP skills to follow exactly the guide you provided, and it doesn’t mean that I have to learn more PHP or something else to fix the design flaw of the kit myself. If the XLS Padlock users have to manually monitor/track the expiry dates, number of runs of individual customers, the promised ‘automatic’ feature of the WooCommerce kit accompanied with the main software is no longer valid. Please look at your promise at the below screenshot.
Capture

I believe that this design flaw needs to be fixed by your side, not by users, to meet what you promised.
 
PhuongM said:
f the XLS Padlock users have to manually monitor/track the expiry dates, number of runs of individual customers, the promised ‘automatic’ feature of the WooCommerce kit accompanied with the main software is no longer valid.
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If you don’t want to monitor, you could also set the number of allowed activations to 1. Thus, once the key is expired, given that it counts for one activation, the user cannot activate again and you have the behavior that you want.
 
Hi support,
I did the followings, none of them helps unfortunately.
  1. 'Set the number of allowed activations to 1’
    I assumed the number of allowed activations are controlled by the config.ini file and I modified the following line:
    ; ** Maximum number of activations per order allowed
    maxactivperorder = 1
    It doesn’t stop the user to re-activate the workbook with the same token.
    Did I modify the right file? If not, which file/where do I need to modify?
  2. 'Automate the blocking with WooCommerce API extensions’
    I bought WooCommerce API Manager and WooCommerce Subscriptions and successfully installed them in the system. I’ve dug all menus/options of these plugins, but did not find any relation to your WooCommerce integration kit.
    None of the option works to prevent the workbook from re-activating. These plugins look promised, but I may have to return them to WooCommerce.
So, what exactly are the API extensions you mentioned earlier? Please provide a guide to implement this.

Again, please don’t ask me to have PHP skills to modify the kit in order to make it works. I’m purely a VBA/VB Excel customer like a lot of other people here in this forum. If you forgot your promise to support XLS Padlock customers who do not want to deal with PHP, please see the below link:
https://www.xlspadlock.com/xl-workbook-online-activation

Awaiting for your response.
 
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I know how to solve your problem…BUT currently I am HAVING MAJOR PROBLEMS getting my app to work PhuongM.Support are helping but we have problems as my code are complex. If I can get my app functions working I will be back to the activation process and I know how to fix it. Hope support can help you though. It all depends if I can get my app working with the compiled software. Goodluck PhuongM
 
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Thanks for your offer to help though with conditions. Your problems are beyond my capacity unfortunately, so sorry I can’t help.
 
PhuongM said:
Set the number of allowed activations to 1’

I assumed the number of allowed activations are controlled by the config.ini file and I modified the following line:

; ** Maximum number of activations per order allowed

maxactivperorder = 1

It doesn’t stop the user to re-activate the workbook with the same token.

Did I modify the right file? If not, which file/where do I need to modify?
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Actually, the current implementation allows a user to reactivate the workbook if he tries to activate on the same computer. The initial goal of activation is to prevent end users from sharing their activated workbook with others.
For your case, you should edit the inc\app\controllers\MainController.php file and add comments to deactivate the lines highlighted below:

image
PhuongM said:
utomate the blocking with WooCommerce API extensions’

I bought WooCommerce API Manager and WooCommerce Subscriptions and successfully installed them in the system. I’ve dug all menus/options of these plugins, but did not find any relation to your WooCommerce integration kit.

None of the option works to prevent the workbook from re-activating. These plugins look promised, but I may have to return them to WooCommerce.
Click to expand...
When we mentioned WooCommerce API extensions, it’s the API freely available in WooCommerce and mentioned here: WooCommerce REST API Documentation - WooCommerce
There is NO relation with the products you mentioned: “WooCommerce API Manager” and “WooCommerce Subscriptions”.
PhuongM said:
Again, please don’t ask me to have PHP skills to modify the kit in order to make it works. I’m purely a VBA/VB Excel customer like a lot of other people here in this forum. If you forgot your promise to support XLS Padlock customers who do not want to deal with PHP, please see the below link:

Online activation and licensing for Excel workbooks - XLS Padlock
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That sentence doesn’t mean you’ll get free support from us about modifying the PHP code in the WooCommerce kit to meet your requests. It is already provided free of charge and works well for the majority of customers. Now, we will continue adding more and more features to the WooCommerce kit depending on requests. For instance, we’ll implement your request to block the token after a given number of activations in a future release.
 
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Hi support,
I don’t think my request is of anything beyond the scope of the promised features. I’m happy to hear about other majority of customers who got the kit works the way it was promised without dealing with PHP. I believe that many of them are watching this forum.

That’s fine with the API extensions that I purchased but unfortunate that they don’t work with your kit. I’ll return them to the store.

Anyway, the quick trick you suggested works though I’m aware that it will attract many calls for support from my users to reactivate the workbook with genuine purpose, ie. after reinstalling the system or anything else I can’t think of at this moment.

Thank you for your support.
 
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PhuongM said:
Anyway, the quick trick you suggested works though I’m aware that it will attract many calls for support from my users to reactivate the workbook with genuine purpose, ie. after reinstalling the system or anything else I can’t think of at this moment.
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That’s unfortunately the bad side of using activation.
 
I don’t fully agree with you at this point. Online activation, i assumed you meant ‘online’, is nothing wrong itself. The problem lies in the way we implement it. I have many other commercial softwares installed on my machine which can be online re-activated flawlessly without calling support after reinstalling the system.
 
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