Don't display WCS&T help in tasks if WCShip or WCTax is active

[waclawjacek]

Submission Review Guidelines:

• I have followed the WooCommerce Contributing Guidelines and the WordPress Coding Standards.
• I have checked to ensure there aren't other open Pull Requests for the same update/change.
• I have reviewed my code for security best practices.
• Following the above guidelines will result in quick merges and clear and detailed feedback when appropriate.

Changes proposed in this Pull Request:

Part of https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce-shipping/issues/187.

If the "WooCommerce Shipping" or "WooCommerce Tax" extension is active, don't recommend the incompatible "WooCommerce Shipping & Tax" extension.

This PR removes WCS&T-related help pages from the "Select your shipping options" and "Collect sales tax" tasks if either the WCShip or WCTax extension is active.

Screenshots

Note that despite the help items saying "WooCommerce Shipping" and "WooCommerce Tax", they actually refers to WCS&T's functionalities.

How to test the changes in this Pull Request:

Using the WooCommerce Testing Instructions Guide, include your detailed testing instructions:

1. Clone this repo, check out this PR's branch, and build WooCommerce. The official instructions are in the repo README file but here's a shortcut:

   nvm use && pnpm i -g pnpm@9.1.0 && pnpm i && pnpm run build
   

2. In your local test site's wp-content/plugins, link the WooCommerce plugin you just built.
   Let's assume you checked out the WooCommerce repo to /home/me/woocommerce.
   Note how below we aren't creating a link to /home/me/woocommerce but rather to a directory within it:

   ln -s /home/me/woocommerce/plugins/woocommerce /var/www/your-test-site/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce
   

3. That's it for building WC Core. Now let's test the tax task:

Testing the "Collect sales tax" task

1. In WP admin, go to WooCommerce > Home. Click the "Collect sales tax" task:
   
2. Click the "?" icon in the top right:
   
3. Without WCShip and/or WCTax installed, you should see this WCS&T-related help item:
   
   Note that despite the help item saying "WooCommerce Tax", it actually refers to WCS&T's tax functionality.
4. With WCShip and/or WCTax installed, you should not see it.

Testing the "Select your shipping options" task

1. To force the task to show up and guide us to the wizard, we have to tweak the code a little. Apply the following patch:

   diff --git a/plugins/woocommerce/src/Admin/Features/OnboardingTasks/Tasks/Shipping.php b/plugins/woocommerce/src/Admin/Features/OnboardingTasks/Tasks/Shipping.php
   index f06534b87c..649d0a7f87 100644
   --- a/plugins/woocommerce/src/Admin/Features/OnboardingTasks/Tasks/Shipping.php
   +++ b/plugins/woocommerce/src/Admin/Features/OnboardingTasks/Tasks/Shipping.php
   @@ -84,6 +84,7 @@ class Shipping extends Task {
    	 * @return bool
    	 */
    	public function can_view() {
   +		return true;
    		if ( Features::is_enabled( 'shipping-smart-defaults' ) ) {
    			if ( 'yes' === get_option( 'woocommerce_admin_created_default_shipping_zones' ) ) {
    				// If the user has already created a default shipping zone, we don't need to show the task.
   @@ -128,6 +129,7 @@ class Shipping extends Task {
    	 * @return string
    	 */
    	public function get_action_url() {
   +		return null;
    		return self::has_shipping_zones()
    			? admin_url( 'admin.php?page=wc-settings&tab=shipping' )
    			: null;
   

2. In WP admin, go to WooCommerce > Home. Click the "Select your shipping options" task:
   
3. Click the "?" icon in the top right.
4. Without WCShip and/or WCTax installed, you should see this WCS&T-related help item:
   
   Note that despite the help item saying "WooCommerce Shipping", it actually refers to WCS&T's shipping functionality.
5. With WCShip and/or WCTax installed, you should not see it.

Changelog entry

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Changelog Entry Details

Significance

• Patch
• Minor
• Major

Type

• Fix - Fixes an existing bug
• Add - Adds functionality
• Update - Update existing functionality
• Dev - Development related task
• Tweak - A minor adjustment to the codebase
• Performance - Address performance issues
• Enhancement - Improvement to existing functionality

Message

Changelog Entry Comment

Comment

If either the upcoming WooCommerce Shipping or WooCommerce Tax extension is active, don't display information about setting up WooCommerce Shipping & Tax in the task steppers for "Collect sales tax" and "Select your shipping options".

The changes in this PR only adjust the help items merchants see.

[github-actions]

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[github-actions]

Size Change: -183 B (-0.01%)

Total Size: 2.49 MB

Filename	Size	Change
./plugins/woocommerce-blocks/build/legacy-template.js	8.04 kB	-183 B (-2.22%)

_{compressed-size-action}

[github-actions]

Hi @samnajian,

Apart from reviewing the code changes, please make sure to review the testing instructions as well.

You can follow this guide to find out what good testing instructions should look like:
https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/wiki/Writing-high-quality-testing-instructions

[samnajian]

With WCShip and/or WCTax installed, you should not see it.

@waclawjacek
When WCShip or WCTax are installed but not active, I still can see the and this line is also checking among the active plugins, shouldn't this PR check among the installed plugins as well?

[waclawjacek]

Thanks for the review! Yep, that's expected - the checks are for "active", not for "installed".

Using "active" allowed me to duplicate the existing logic, incl. writing checks identical to some existing ones just with different plugin slugs/class names, and using the plugins_activated rule in the rule evaluator.

We can change it from "is WCShip/WCTax active?" to "is WCShip/WCTax installed?" but this would require input from @MatthiasReinholz and/or @kloon. If we don't care about it too much, I'd say let's leave it as it is so the scope of changes is a little bit smaller.

[waclawjacek]

Force-pushed because the base branch this PR was built on top of has since been merged to trunk.

[MatthiasReinholz]

Thanks for the ping @waclawjacek ,
I'm wondering if we even need this task list entry at all? Is there a reason for us to keep the WCS&T task under these conditions? Wouldn't we want all users to migrate to WooCommerce Shipping / WooCommerce Tax?

[samnajian]

Based on this Slack thread p1719388812098259-slack-C04KWSNPSE5 it's fine to rely on plugin activation for this PR, with this condition, this PR works as expected.

LGTM,

[waclawjacek]

Is there a reason for us to keep the WCS&T task under these conditions? Wouldn't we want all users to migrate to WooCommerce Shipping / WooCommerce Tax?

Ultimately, I believe that's the goal. But for the time being, we're only taking care to not recommend WCS&T if it'd lead to a conflict with the WCShip/WCTax extensions.