Customer email is required error on Checkout when going through as a guest

Question

In Magento 1.7, whenever I go through the checkout process as guest at the end of the onepage checkout process I get the Magento error:

Customer email is required

Having used xDebug to profile the problem the code I have in my observer which is executed on the sales_order_place_after observer I have a function called afterOrderPlaced()

public function afterOrderPlaced($observer)
{
    $organisation_id = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->getOrganisationId(); #$organisation_id = 25679;
    $this->_order = $observer->getEvent()->getOrder();
    $this->_order->setOrganisationId($organisation_id)->save();

    // Customer stuff
    $this->_customer_id = $this->_order->getCustomerId();
    $this->_customer = $this->_order->getCustomer(); 

    // problem on the next line below #PROBLEM HERE#
    $this->_customer->setOrganisationId($organisation_id)->save();
}

The issue is on the last line of the function - for some reason it doesn't seem to like the save() on the customer object. This goes into the core files in Mage\Core\Model\Resource\Transaction.php on line 161 within the save() - see below:

public function save()
{
    $this->_startTransaction();
    $error     = false;

    try {
        foreach ($this->_objects as $object) {
            $object->save();
        }
    } catch (Exception $e) {
        $error = $e;
    }

    if ($error === false) {
        try {
            $this->_runCallbacks();
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            $error = $e; ## ERROR IS HAPPENING HERE?! ##
        }
    }

    if ($error) {
        $this->_rollbackTransaction();
        throw $error;
    } else {
        $this->_commitTransaction();
    }

    return $this;
}

Can anyone indicate what my problem maybe within my observer and why it doesn't seem to like to save the custom organisation_id to the customer object?

Answer 1

For guest user why are you trying to save organisation id in customer profile, there will no customer profile to save because Magento doesn't create customer in customer entity for guest users. You need to add condition to your function above to resolve the problem

if(!$order->getCustomerIsGuest()){
   // Customer stuff
   $this->_customer_id = $this->_order->getCustomerId();
   $this->_customer = $this->_order->getCustomer(); 

  // problem on the next line below #PROBLEM HERE#
  $this->_customer->setOrganisationId($organisation_id)->save();
}

Hope the above helps

Cheers S