Magento 2 Sales Order Shipment Event/Observer Guide

It was some logic issue in your code

issue1: 'Items' => $order->getAllVisibleItems() not works it is big object.it print and var_dump is stuck works.

change the function $data['Items']=$this->createOrderItems($order->getIncrementId()); and modified code

    public function exportOrder($order)
{       
        Mage::log('Shopaton Order exportOrder', null, 'Shopatron.log');
        $dirPath = Mage::getBaseDir('var') . DS . 'export';

        if (!is_dir($dirPath))
        {
                mkdir($dirPath, 0777, true);
        }
        $customerIP = Mage::helper('core/http')->getRemoteAddr(true);
        $data=array();
        //Getting the Proper 2 Character State
        $regionModel = Mage::getSingleton('directory/region');
        $regionModel->load($order->getShippingAddress()->getRegionId());
        $sstate_code = $regionModel->getCode();
        $regionModel->load($order->getBillingAddress()->getRegionId());
        $bstate_code = $regionModel->getCode();
        Mage::log($bstate_code, null, 'Shopatron.log');
        Mage::log($sstate_code, null, 'Shopatron.log');
        $data = array('OrderID'=>$order->getIncrementId(), 
                'Email'=>$order->getData('customer_email'), 
                'CustomerIP'=>$customerIP,
                'ShipMethod' =>$order->getData('shipping_method'),
                'ShippingPhone' =>$order->getShippingAddress()->getData('telephone'),
                'ShippingFirstName'=>$order->getShippingAddress()->getFirstname(),
                'ShippingLastName' => $order->getShippingAddress()->getLastname(),
                'ShippingStreet' => $order->getShippingAddress()->getStreet(),
                'ShippingCity' => $order->getShippingAddress()->getCity(),
                'ShippingState' =>  $sstate_code,
                'ShippingCountry' => $order->getShippingAddress()->getCountryId(),
                'ShippingZip' => substr($order->getShippingAddress()->getPostcode(),0,5),
                'BillingPhone' => $order->getBillingAddress()->getData('telephone'),
                'BillingFirstName' => $order->getBillingAddress()->getFirstname(),
                'BillingLastName' => $order->getBillingAddress()->getLastname(),
                'BillingStreet' => $order->getBillingAddress()->getStreet(),
                'BillingCity' => $order->getBillingAddress()->getcity(),
                'BillingState' => $bstate_code,
                'BillingCountry' => $order->getBillingAddress()->getCountryId(),
                'BillingZip' => substr($order->getBillingAddress()->getPostcode(),0,5),
                //Why can't I call getAllVisibleItems?
               //'Items' => $order->getAllVisibleItems()

        );

        try{
          $data['Items']=$this->createOrderItems($order->getIncrementId());
        } catch(Exception $e){
          Mage::log($e->getMessage(), null, 'system.log');
          //Nothing shows up in the log to help troubleshoot
        }
        //$xstrout = toXmlRpc($data);
        /*file_put_contents(
                $dirPath. DS .$data['OrderID'].'.xml22',
                print "<PRE>" . htmlentities ( $xstrout ) . "</PRE>", 
                FILE_APPEND
        );*/
        //sendMsg($xstrout);
        return true;
}

Issue:

lot of issue:

    public function createOrderItems($orderId)
    {
            Mage::log('Shopatron Order createOrderItems', null, 'Shopatron.log');
            $order=Mage::getModel('sales/order')->loadByIncrementId($orderId);
            $items=$order->getAllVisibleItems();
            $i=0;
            $IO=array();
            $itemcount=count($items);
            foreach ($items as  $item)
            {
                    $IO[$i]['name']=$item->getName();
                    $IO[$i]['price']=$item->getPrice();
                    $IO[$i]['sku']=$item->getSku();
                    $IO[$i]['id']=$item->getProductId();
                   // $IO[$i]['upc']=getUpcFromSku($item->getSku());
                    $IO[$i]['qty']=$item->getQtyOrdered(); //$item->getQtyToInvoice();
                    //$IO[$i]['options']=createOptionsArray($item->getProductOptions(), $itemId);
                    if($itemcount>1)
                    {
                            $IO[$i]['shipping']=$order->getData('shipping_amount')/$itemcount;
                            $IO[$i]['tax'] = $order->getData('tax_amount')/$itemcount;
                    }
                    elseif($itemcount == 1)
                    {
                            $IO[$i]['shipping']=$order->getData('shipping_amount');
                            $IO[$i]['tax'] = $order->getData('tax_amount');
                    }       
                    $i++;
            }
            return $IO;
    }
}

With sales_order_shipment_save_commit_after you will run into the same issue. The other mentioned events do not tell if the shipment was/will be created successfully.

Probably the sales_order_shipment_save_after event is just fine, but you miss a point: The save() method is not only called on create operations but also on update. In your case, I guess, the latter fires on invoice creation.

Stick with the event and test in your observer method whether the shipment was just created or not:

// Observer::shipmentSaveAfter()
if ($observer->getShipment()->getOrigData('entity_id')) {
    // shipment updated, do nothing
    return;
}

// shipment new, send text message

This is not 100% reliable though as the original data is populated on load and as such not necessarily during multiple calls to the save() method.

Alternatively you could register a flag on sales_order_shipment_save_before:

// Observer::shipmentSaveBefore()
if ($observer->getShipment()->isObjectNew()) {
    Mage::register('send_shipment_message', true);
}


// Observer::shipmentSaveAfter()
if (!Mage::registry('send_shipment_message')) {
    // shipment updated, do nothing
    return;
}

Mage::unregister('send_shipment_message');
// shipment new, send text message