Common Issue – SyntaxError: Unexpected Token

If woothemes and automattic are not going to offer a solution then why would you keep others from getting a solution even if its a paid one? You aren’t helping people when you absolve yourself of responsibility for this issue, then on top of that you want to keep others from finding a solution when you won’t offer one!

I’m having this issue, too. I would imagine this has cost us thousands already… no response, nothing.

I am in the same situation Rob. I’ve been debugging, testing, switching themes, the works – this is a problem that has come because of the Woo Commerce update.

Have tried Mike’s fix, didn’t work.

How an issue of this magnitude got into a public release is a ridiculous concept in the first place is a farce.

There are *NO* other plugins live on the website, no gateway plugins, de nada, nothing, zilch, zero. Yet, this is where the issue supposedly lies…

I’m at my wits end and thanks to the cock-up, I am missing out on days of sales in the pre-Xmas rush.

There have been a number of times that updating Woo has broken my sites, but this one takes the cake. Whoever makes this needs to do some serious unit testing before releasing.

when does this happen?

This very much underscores the need for Woothemes and Automattic to dig deep and find an answer and address this fiasco they have caused. Instead they choose to bury their head in the sand as people struggle.

If Woothemes isn’t going to offer a solution they shouldn’t be standing in the way. Youre either going to help or your going to be an obstacle to people finding a solution, paid or otherwise.

Rob, in your other thread you said you had resolved this.

For the umteenth time, this error comes from a plugin you have installed. Without naming the plugins you have installed, how to you honestly expect anyone to even begin to assist?

It’s 99% certain to be a gateway that has not been tested in WC 2.5.

Ideas and Pixels, I don’t really know what more to say to you. If the change you’ve posted about on your blog ‘fixes’ things it indicates that something is hooking into the payment_complete step. Doing real debugging, or looking at your logs, would reveal more. You’re just working around a bug in your code and it will cause future problems.

sampeoples, post a link to your site. It will take me 2 mins to see what error is on your checkout.

This problem still exists, no matter how much woothemes lives in denial about it, this is a very real issue. If youre not offering a solution, don’t be an obstacle.

Rob this is helping no-one. The cause varies between sites – there is no silver bullet. If you’re still experiencing the issue on your own sites, post something helpful. A link to checkout would be a start. If it were a core issue all sites would be affected and thats simply not the case.

Your right Mike, to the people who are going through a very real & serious problem, your words are no solution.

To a small store this could sink their business, ruin their reputation. These are real people with real damage.

I would say Woothemes should practice their own advice, post something useful!

Here you go, something useful: https://mikejolley.com/2015/11/12/debugging-unexpected-token-in-woocommerce-2-4/

@mike,
In your blog post (above), you’ve stated

In 2.4+ this was made more strict in that the response must be valid JSON.

This seems to be the crux of the matter. While requiring a valid JSON response is reasonable and proper, some 3rd party authors are not keeping up, as you’ve noted.

To defuse this issue, could you not offer an alternative ‘detuned’ file which would return to the less strict regime?

Even if this would require the customers experiencing this issue to hack the core, it would temporarily solve the issue, giving them time to focus on prompting the 3rd party authors to catch up.

To defuse this issue, could you not offer an alternative ‘detuned’ file which would return to the less strict regime?

I don’t think that will help. Lets say an extension echo’s a form for example, as I’ve seen happen. Even if we were less strict, what should happen to this content? Spit it out? Ignore it? Whatever happens, that gateway won’t function as it should. This is why the checkout has been made more strict – its standardised and all gateways must work in the same way.

Even if this would require the customers experiencing this issue to hack the core, it would temporarily solve the issue, giving them time to focus on prompting the 3rd party authors to catch up.

Some of it is just error’ing code, like the notice I threw in my example. Thats why in one of the stickies I show how to turn off error reporting, but this doesn’t work in all cases.