Unpublishing registrants whose payment_method is empty string fails

Hello

My client met a situation that Unpublishing a registrant for a free event didn't work.
I noticed Unpublishing some of the registrants worked correctly, but doing for others failed.

I examined the database (DB table of '#__eb_registrants') and found that
the record whose 'payment_method' field was '' (empty string) couldn't be unpublished from the backend.

My client holds only events of free of charge, and enabled payment plugin is only 'offline payment'.
So I ran the sql query below, and he can unpublish any registrants from the backend now:

UPDATE `#__eb_registrants` SET `payment_method` = 'os_offline' WHERE `payment_method` = '';

As for the configuration of Registration Settings, the "Show Billing Step For Free Events" is set to No.
So any registrants didn't have a chance to choose their payment method.

I guess there may be a bug about creating a registrant record for a free event.
If you find it, please fix it in the future update of the Event Booking.

As the site is runing now and has a lot of individual information,
my client will not allow me to provide a super admin account to you.
I wish you'll find the cause.

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The version of Event Booking is 3.8.4, running on the Joomla! 3.9.2.

Hello Nakamura

Exactly what's the error you are getting when you try to unpublish these registration records? I guess it's not being unpublished? If so, that's how the system is designed to work. For these registrations, basically, it's Paid/Confirmed registrations and there is no reasons to unpublish it. Maybe if you want to unpublish, better removing them in this case

We have the code to prevent this because we don't want admin to unpublish paid registrations by mistake

Tuan

Hello Tuan,
Thank you for your reply.

When I try to unpublish these records, A message of successfully processed is shown, though they remain as published.
I understand that it is an expected behavior and why the behavior is designed so by you.

Why my client wants to unpublish some registrants is
because he chooses some of them as actural attendants for the event.

His event is always free of charge, and the actual capacity is very small (less than 10).
When he publishes a new event after he set the capacity to 10, the capacity becomes full very quickly.
As a result, the most of his customer (the registered users of his joomla site) can't participate in
any events he planned.

So he decides to set the capacity larger than the actural capacity (as 100, for example).
After the cut off date passed, he examines the list,
and picks up actural attendants of the event from the registrants.

In his case, the registrants who is not choosen may be better to be removed, as you say.
But according to him, they are important records because he will preferentially choose them for an upcoming event when they register themselves to it.

With his usage, the registrants who is not choosen as the attendant by him should not receive the reminder mail.

This is why he tries to unpublish some of registrants.

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I consulted him just now about your reply.
He decided to leave those records as published, and to disable auto reminder.

Thank you for your support.

OK Nakamura. Or maybe he can edit these records, change Registration Status to Cancelled. It should work, too

Regards,

Tuan