Cannot set placeholder address on cart, or remove the address.

[samkelleher]

Scenario: When a customer is paying with Apple Pay, when the sheet opens, they pass to us the city, state, partial postal code, and country. Not any street information. This is sufficient to calculate available shipping methods and tax, without revealing any customer PII.

However, to get the available shipping methods, I must first save the address to the cart (GQL setShippingAddressCartMutation), which requires full address information. To get around this, I set the shipping address with name, street, and phone fields with placeholder data. This allows the cart to calculate the tax and available shipping methods normally.

This is reflected in the Apple Pay sheet, where the customer can select one of the shipping methods, if any, and be shown the order total with tax.

Once they approve the transaction, we are given the full address information, which I then set on cart (and hope it doesn't trigger a change in available shipping methods or tax).

If they decline, or payment fails, they can continue through to the normal checkout process. However, there is no way for me to remove the placeholder address I set on the cart. Because I cannot delete it or set an empty value since it does not pass basic validation. The only option I can think of is to create a new cart and re-add all the items/rewards/vouchers, which seems fragile, and not an option if they are logged in as I believe an account can only have 1 cart?

This issue is a request for:

• Ability to set partial address data, move the full address requirement for the final placeOrder call.
• Ability to reset/delete an address on a cart.

[focusaurus]

Hmm. Yeah if that's the mechanics of Apple Pay I think relaxing the validation until the final placeOrder call is warranted and makes sense. Thoughts @kieckhafer ?

[kieckhafer]

@focusaurus I agree, would love to update how this flow works and allow for more information to be calculated earlier on.

As @samkelleher seems to be doing, just passing in zip / state / city should be enough to calculate the taxes and get the shipping methods in most scenarios.

The only scenario I can think of off the top of my head where the payment methods would be re-triggered once the full address is given is if the address ends up being a PO box, or a military address (although Military addresses usually have a specific state designation lik AE or AA or APO).

[brent-hoover]

I think PO Boxes also have special zip codes

[samkelleher]

What is the preferred solution from this list, any thing else please suggest.

Option 1

• If a partial address is allowed to be set, the UI/checkout logic must be updated to determine that a partial address is set, and not consider the shipping address step as complete. Thus dropping the user back into that step.

Option 2

• If a full address with dumb placeholder data is set, the UI/checkout logic must determine if the address has placeholder data by checking it's values, and making a call to to a new mutation remove the address. The checkout flow would behave as it does now, continuing as if an address has not been set.

Option 3

• An entirely new query that can give a tax quote and available shipping methods based on a given address. Not associated to a cart. Only when we know the methods/address is good, can we apply it to the cart during Apple Pay processing. No changes required to the existing checkout flow logic. We actually already set the address during apple pay anyway since this is the time we are given the full address. Other existing APIs remain unchanged.

Thoughts @focusaurus @kieckhafer

[focusaurus]

I would lean toward Option 1 perhaps supported with a dedicated field on the address like isComplete. It might be good for me to walk through the UI with @samkelleher or @kieckhafer though as I haven't seen this flow and that might solidify my understanding.

Kind of a side note but in general saving work-in-progress (any user input) whether valid or not is much preferable to leaving it unsaved with a validation error and then having it lost if the tab gets accidentally closed or they step away and a laptop battery runs out, or accidentally hit the back button, etc.