[Broken functionality] Tolerant currency code handling for GiveWP Event Tickets Beta to prevent fatal error in admin UI

[edie-etoile]

Environment

• WordPress: 6.9
• PHP: 8.3.28
• GiveWP: 4.13.2 (Event Tickets Beta enabled)
• Intl extension: enabled (Unicode ICU data present)
• Site: idabwellsmediadefense.org
• Affected area: GiveWP Admin > Tickets for events (Disappearing Voices: The Decline of Black Radio)
• Data touched: various GiveWP meta tables, notably _give_payment_currency and _give_cs_currency, plus event tickets data

Summary
Editing an Event Tickets entry (event_id = 1) triggers a fatal error in the admin UI due to a non-string or invalid currency code being passed to Money\Currency->__construct(), causing “InvalidArgumentException: Currency code should be string.” A temporary defensive patch was implemented in the Money\Currency class to tolerate non-string inputs and default invalid values to USD. This ticket documents the issue, the patch, testing steps, and a plan to maintain the fix until GiveWP releases an official patch.

Symptoms

• On the event tickets admin page, the “salesAmount” column shows “Something went wrong, more in detail in logs.”
• WP_DEBUG.log shows:
  • Date: 2026-01-08 16:22:25 UTC
  • Fatal error: InvalidArgumentException: Currency code should be string
  • Stack trace points to Money\Currency::__construct() invoked via EventTicket model
• The front-end admin edit page for the event shows a generic “There has been a critical error on this website” message.

Root Cause

• In the Event Tickets Beta path, the code constructs Money\Currency with a currency code that is not a string or not a valid 3-letter code.
• This leads to a fatal error in the admin UI when rendering the tickets table.
• Although meta tables (_give_payment_currency, _give_cs_currency) show USD for many donations, some tickets/donations patterns may deliver non-string or invalid currency data to the Money currency constructor.

Temporary Fix Implemented (Patch Details)

• Nature of fix: Defensive patch to Money\Currency to tolerate non-string inputs and default invalid values to USD.
• Location: vendor/moneyphp/money/src/Currency.php
• Summary of changes:
  • Accepts mixed input for currency code.
  • Coerces non-string to string.
  • If value is empty or not a 3-letter alphabetic string, default to USD.
  • Store code as uppercase.
• Rationale: Prevents the fatal error in the admin UI while preserving normal behavior for valid codes.

Patched Code (exact changes)

• File: vendor/moneyphp/money/src/Currency.php

public function __construct($code)
{
    // Coerce non-string input to string to avoid InvalidArgumentException  
    if (!is_string($code)) {
        $code = (string) $code;
    }

    // Normalize and provide a safe default if invalid  
    // - empty strings  
    // - non-3-letter codes  
    if ($code === '' || !preg_match('/^[A-Za-z]{3}$/', $code)) {
        $code = 'USD';
    }

    // Store as uppercase  
    $this->code = strtoupper($code);
}

Validation / Tests performed

• Replaced the constructor with the above logic and reloaded the admin page for the affected event.
• Confirmed that the previous “critical error” on Edit no longer appears.
• Verified that the salesAmount column renders without fatal errors.
• Checked PHP error log to ensure no new currency-related errors are logged.
• Confirmed that _give_payment_currency and _give_cs_currency values remain sane (3-letter codes) after patch.