Category: StackExchange

Since the last “Weeks on StackExchange” post got quite long, I’ll get back to the weekly schedule:

Hot Magento 2 answers

• I found an elegant solution to my own recent question, with DI configuration only: Force products collection to use EAV instead of flat table (with personal upvote from Ivan Chepurny, so it can’t be too bad)
• Dependency Injection with dynamic constructor values is another example for the power of Magento’s DI configuration, here in combination with external libraries.
• A general question about module architecture: Best practice for location of a class
• In Magento 2 Layout Events: controller_action_layout_render_before vs. layout_render_before I ponder about how to make dynamic changes to the layout. The conclusion is not to use these events at all.
• Is Magento compatible with PHP 7.1? Probably, but composer complains: Magento 2.1.1 not compatibile with PHP 7.1.0

Open questions

• (Magento 2) I am trying to make a RequireJS override dependent on a backend configuration: Conditional RequireJS configuration
• (Magento 1) Geo IP based store view selection with Varnish – has been answered but I’ve yet to try it out to get to a full solution.

Here we go again, a summary of interesting posts from the last weeks:

Magento 2 CLI

• Use the Magento 2 profiler in CLI

  TL;DR: with this workaround, you can activate the profiler in CLI scripts:

  HTTP_ACCEPT="text/html" MAGE_PROFILER=csvfile bin/magento

• How do we tell CLI scripts that our document root is pub? MAGE_DIRS bootstrap parameters in CLI – no answer yet, I fear this is not possible as of Magento 2.1

Magento 2 Extension Development

• I probably shouldn’t tell anyone, but there is a way to replace any core class with this little composer trick: How to override a zend class
• How to deploy public PHP files in Magento 2 extension? unanswered, +100 bounty
• Dependency Injection with dynamic constructor values – how would you pass constructor arguments to dependencies?
• Reasons to use the layout when instantiating blocks programmatically: Dynamically created blocks: layout->createBlock() or blockFactory->create()?
• This is more a rant than a question, it seems like without core hacks it is not possible as of Magento 2.1: Get frontend category URL in admin area with correct base URL
• Force products collection to use EAV instead of flat table, still has +100 bounty

Magento 2 Translation

• How to translate core Magento modules and create a CSV translation file per module? – short answer: you don’t.

Magento Product Import

• Why you shouldn’t use HTML encoded characters everywhere: How to import product name with ™ and ® symbol?

Magento 1 Best Practices

• What does Varien_Object_Cache do and should you use it? Magento 1: using Mage::objects() to cache models
• A little explanation of the relation between cron.sh and cron.php: Is adding “$isShellDisabled = true; ” in “cron.php” recommended?

Magento 1 Tipps

• How to add a missing feature: ACL for the tabs on the order view page: set acl permission for tabs in sales order view
• How to purge (delete) credit card numbers stored on Magento 1.9.1.0?

PHPUnit

• Test output to php://stdout with PHPUnit

And again some new posts from Magento StackExchange that I’d like to highlight:

Magento 2

• This is Session Configuration 101, but I found it interesting that Magento 2.1 has a hard coded value for the admin area: Logout customer when the browser is closed
• How to use database transactions in Magento 2: Magento 2 – Database transaction for multiple model / resource model objects?
• Another practical example for increment models, now in Magento 2: Add Dynamic Order Number Prefix [mm-yy-ordernumber]
• A step on my journey to understand Magento 2.1 search engine adapters: Does layered navigation always have to use the configured search engine?
• And a nasty little bug: “Asymmetric transaction rollback error” in integration test

Magento 1

• Raphael from DigitalPianism came up with this question: Magento 1: how to make an extension EE compatible?. I started to answer it with a few bullet points but it could do with some more attention.

I’m a bit late but I was quite active on the Magento StackExchange recently, so here are the best posts from last week!

Magento 1 answers

• Maarten Wolfsen found a nice trick to add header elements like CSS files at the end for all pages: CSS file is loaded too early
• Loading children of a category including disabled categories: Get Disabled Category Collection (Hint: you cannot use getChildren() for this)
• A practical example for increment models (order numbers should be incremented by 4 each time): How to set order increment id iterator in magento 1?
• Canonical answer for transactional emails: How to send mail from custom module?
• Canonical answer for controller overrides: Magento 1 : how to override/rewrite a core controller class?

PHPUnit

• In phpunit anything matcher inside array I show a possible way to use PHPUnit matcher objects like anything() in arrays passed to assertEquals()

New Magento 2 questions

• Indexer “updated” column not updated?
• Reasons to setup cronjob for setup:cron:run and update/cron.php on a deployed production system?

Short and sweet: StackExchange posts of the last two weeks.

Magento 1

• How it is possible to filter by final price: addAttributeToFilter not working with final_price
• Does it make sense to load a single item using collections? Difference in performance between load and using collections
• Not directly my answer but it deserves some more attention: Store code in URL for every store view except for default (the KISS way)
• What should you do if SQL queries start appearing in the search suggestions: Spam bots & SQL Injections – How do I stop this?
• Good question: What does the “persistent shopping cart” actually do? I’m not so sure anymore: Does Persistent Shopping Cart work for guest (unlogged) visitors?
• I had some trouble triggering the EE URL indexer, not happy with the solution yet: Force URL indexation in Magento 1 Enterprise
• The attempt for a canonical question: How do I override/rewrite a block class in Magento 1? The answers so far already cover a good deal

Magento 2

• Interesting idea: let proxy decide at runtime which concrete class to instantiate: Magento 2 Dependency Injection: Lazy Load with Resolution of Concrete Class-Name

I was active on Magento StackExchange again, here are a few interesting questions and answers from the last three weeks:

Magento 1

• (Why) do we need these ugly ___store and ___from_store URL parameters? M1: Remove “?___store=default” from the URL. And isn’t it at least possible to make them look nicer (“SEO friendly”)? Optimise URL when changing Store and language switcher to maintain SEO standards
• One question, three completely different approaches: how to add default products to related products list
• Sounds easy, but isn’t quite straightforward: Exclude Category when showing product collection

Magento 2

• A dirty hack, but very useful for development: Add same plugin to all public methods of a type
• Since Magento 2.1, creating own category attributes gets remarkably more complex: Add category attribute to custom attribute group. And this is how it looks with a source model: Create multiselect with source model in UI component
• I’m unsatisfied with the catalog service contracts again… “Call to a member function getIsInStock() on null” with getExtensionAttributes()->getStockItem() (or: How do I get products with stock info from the repository?)

Magento Architecture

Good question for understanding “MVC” in Magento: Why does Magento need blocks?. There was a similar question once here: Where’s The V in Magento’s MVC? And is there better name?