Posts Tagged ‘Magento’

Things you Should Know Before Developing With Magento

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Now being more experienced with Magento we definitely feel the need to share our findings with the masses. We only wish we knew these things prior to trying to the hack the crap out of magento to make it do what we want.

Turning on Template Path Hints
If you’re new to Magento you will realize that it is quite a hassle to understand the logic behind the file structure and block structure of a magento layout when trying to customize your storefront. There is a very under-publicized built-in magento feature that we’d like to share with you that should help you on your journey. Magento actually has the ability to display hints showing where the different files of your layout is contained so that you can edit it.

To achieve this, Follow these simple steps…

• Log in to your administration panel. Go to Sytem > Configuration.
• From the left navigation column on top there will be “Current Configuration Scope”. In the drop down menu select “Main Website”
• Then navigate to Developer > Advance, also in the left navigation column.
• Under “Debug” you’ll see Template Path Hints. Select Yes and click the Save Config button.

Now when you navigate to your storefront you’ll see a bunch of red boxes displaying the underlying structure of the pages regarding templates and blocks.

Note: This should only be used in a development environment, considering this will make your storefront look hideous with big red blocks everywhere.

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Never edit core files
Problem: When developing with Magento you will find it necesary to edit core files to achieve certain functionality. However, By editting a core file you are basically blocking yourself into a corner. DON’T DO IT! If you ever wish to upgrade at any point in the future you will not be able to because any changes that you have made in the core files will be overwritten. Never fear, there is a way around this.

Solution: The “local” folder (\app\code\local\) is your saviour. Say you need to edit the “Shipping.php” file located at “\app\code\core\Mage\Shipping\Model\Shipping.php” you can create the same basic directory structure in the local folder and copy and paste the Shipping.php file into the new directory. So, your new “local” Shipping.php file will be located at \app\code\local\Mage\Shipping\Model\Shipping.php. You will be able to safely edit anything and everything within that local file and never have to worry about it being overwritten during an upgrade. This trick works because Magento will look for files in a local directory before looking for a file in the core directory.

Note: The above solution will only overpower files that exist within the \app\code\core\ or \app\code\community\ directories. Also note that any files within your magento theme (\app\design\frontend\default\YOURTHEME\) or (\skin\frontend\default\YOURTHEME\) are not considered core files and you are free to edit them as you please.

These are just to name a few… Follow our blog to read more!

In this day and age of many online scams it is necessary for every successful eCommerce storefront to have SSL Authentication for online purchases. These SSL Certificates are usually only good for one specific URL and are very picky as to whether or not the URL has to have “www.” attached to it. Here is a simple solution that we’ve created to force appending “www.” to the URL when trying to access a “https://” (http secure) address.

Some things you must know:

• This will only work on an Apache server
• You must have mod_rewrite installed under Apache

First, Create an .htaccess file if you don’t already have one. Then enter one of the following solutions based on your needs.

Force appending www. to only http secure (https://) requests

# Redirect non-www to www

	Options +FollowSymLinks
	# turn mod_rewrite on
	RewriteEngine On

	# If https send to https://www.
	RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YOURDOMAIN.COM$ [NC]
	RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
	RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.YOURDOMAIN.COM/$1 [R=301,L]

Force appending www. to both http (http://) and http secure (https://) requests

# Redirect non-www to www

	Options +FollowSymLinks
	# turn mod_rewrite on
	RewriteEngine On

	# If https send to https://www.
	RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YOURDOMAIN.COM$ [NC]
	RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
	RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.YOURDOMAIN.COM/$1 [R=301,L]

	# If http send to http://www.
	RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^YOURDOMAIN.COM$ [NC]
	RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
	RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.YOURDOMAIN.COM/$1 [R=301,L]

With these examples it is necesary for you to make sure that you replace “YOURDOMAIN.COM” to reflect the actual domain name of the website you will be using this on. Once you have done this, save your .htaccess file and upload it to the base directory of your website.

Believe it or not a few search engines distinguish your website as two different websites http://www.yourdomain.com and http://yourdomain.com. It is often considered good practice to add this htaccess rewrite to any website you create so that you can rest assured that your website is not being indexed as two different websites.

If you’re running Magento on OpenSuse (or any platform for that matter), you can really benefit from turning on http compression, especially to remote areas or from hosts that have limited bandwidth.

There are a lot of references out there on this, but you have to sort of pull it all together on your own for this particular combination.

Verify that mod_deflate has been installed in Apache:

1. Open /etc/sysconfig/apache2.

2. Find the line that starts:

APACHE_MODULES=…

3. Verify that “deflate” is one of the modules listed (may not be in alphabetical order).

Now, enable compression in the virtual host file for your site:

1. Open /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/.conf.

2. Add the following lines inside the tag:

    <IfModule mod_deflate.c>
	DeflateBufferSize 32768
	DeflateCompressionLevel 5

	<Location />
		SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
		BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
		BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
		BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
		SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI \.(?:gif|jpe?g|png|tiff)$ no-gzip dont-vary
		# Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary
	</Location>
    </IfModule>

Now restart Apache using:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

and you should be in business!

Validate that compression is working

A great, handy online site that you can use to validate that compression is working is http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php.

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“e-commerce done right”
http://www.ifuelinteractive.com

On many occasions we’ve needed to clear out the test data from a Magento site in preparation for going live.  It’s not as trivial as you’d think, but I found a nice sql script thanks to Elias Interactive that was just what I needed.  I’ve removed a bit as I didn’t need to reset all the order numbers, etc.

updated 6/30/2010 for Magento 1.4

-- Reset Magento TEST Data

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;

-- reset dashboard search queries
TRUNCATE `catalogsearch_query`;
ALTER TABLE `catalogsearch_query` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;

-- reset sales order info
TRUNCATE `sales_order`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_datetime`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_decimal`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_entity`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_entity_datetime`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_entity_decimal`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_entity_int`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_entity_text`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_entity_varchar`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_int`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_text`;
TRUNCATE `sales_order_varchar`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_quote`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_quote_address`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_quote_address_item`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_quote_item`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_quote_item_option`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_order_item`;
TRUNCATE `sendfriend_log`;
TRUNCATE `tag`;
TRUNCATE `tag_relation`;
TRUNCATE `tag_summary`;
TRUNCATE `wishlist`;
TRUNCATE `log_quote`;
TRUNCATE `report_event`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_quote_payment`;
TRUNCATE `sales_flat_quote_shipping_rate`;
TRUNCATE `log_url`;
TRUNCATE `log_url_info`;
TRUNCATE `log_visitor`;
TRUNCATE `log_visitor_info`;

ALTER TABLE `sales_order` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_datetime` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_decimal` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_entity` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_entity_datetime` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_entity_decimal` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_entity_int` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_entity_text` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_entity_varchar` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_int` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_text` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_order_varchar` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_flat_quote` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_flat_quote_address` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_flat_quote_address_item` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_flat_quote_item` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_flat_quote_item_option` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sales_flat_order_item` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `sendfriend_log` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `tag` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `tag_relation` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `tag_summary` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `wishlist` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `log_quote` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
ALTER TABLE `report_event` AUTO_INCREMENT=1;

Just run this script against the Magento database (make a backup first!).

=============================
“e-commerce done right”
http://www.ifuelinteractive.com

I’ve been looking for a way to log all the sql that Magento is running for debugging purposes. There are a number of logging mechanisms built in to Magento, but none that would allow you to log all the sql that’s being run. Finally, I’ve found a simple change that can be made to a core file (I know, not ideal because it will get overwritten when you upgrade Magento – but it’s only a few lines in one file).

The Change

1. Open the file <magentoroot>/lib/Varien/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Mysql.php.

2. Add the following lines:

$code = 'SQL: ' . $sql . "\r\n";
if ($bind) {
     $code .= 'BIND: ' . print_r($bind, true) . "\r\n";
}
$this->_debugWriteToFile("[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] ".$code);

Add it to the “query” function as shown below:

public function query($sql, $bind = array())
{
     $this->_debugTimer();

     try {
          $sql = (string)$sql;
          if (strpos($sql, ':') !== false || strpos($sql, '?') !== false) {
               $this->_bindParams = $bind;
               $sql = preg_replace_callback('#(([\'"])((\\2)|((.*?[^\\\\])\\2)))#', array($this, 'proccessBindCallback'), $sql);
               $bind = $this->_bindParams;
          }

          $code = 'SQL: ' . $sql . "\r\n";
          if ($bind) {
               $code .= 'BIND: ' . print_r($bind, true) . "\r\n";
          }
          $this->_debugWriteToFile("[".date('Y-m-d H:i:s')."] ".$code);

          $result = parent::query($sql, $bind);
     }
     catch (Exception $e) {
          $this->_debugStat(self::DEBUG_QUERY, $sql, $bind);
          $this->_debugException($e);
     }
     $this->_debugStat(self::DEBUG_QUERY, $sql, $bind, $result);
     return $result;
 }

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My previous post on adding to the cart with ajax in Magento has generated enough interest – and pointed out enough flaws in my overly complex code – that I’ve decided to put together a simplified version, so here goes:

ajaxAddToCart.zip

Step 1: Create the server side script.
My sample script is called “addToCartTest.php” and I put it in a /scripts folder in the root of my Magento installation.

< ?php
include_once '../app/Mage.php';
Mage::app();

try{
     // usage /scripts/addToCartTest.php?product_id=838&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;qty=1
     $product_id = '';

     // get query string
     if (!isset($_GET['product_id'])) { $product_id = ''; } else { $product_id = $_GET['product_id']; }
     if (!isset($_GET['qty'])) { $qty = '1'; } else { $qty = $_GET['qty']; }

     $product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($product_id);

     $session = Mage::getSingleton('core/session', array('name'=>'frontend'));
     $cart = Mage::helper('checkout/cart')->getCart();

     $cart->addProduct($product, $qty);

     $session->setLastAddedProductId($product->getId());
     $session->setCartWasUpdated(true);

     $cart->save();

     $result = "{'result':'success'}";
     echo $result;

} catch (Exception $e) {
     $result = "{'result':'error'";
     $result .= ", 'message': '".$e->getMessage()."'}";
     echo $result;
}

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Updated: 10/14/2009

Over the years I’ve collected together a list of the tools I use all the time. I know there are lots of other lists like this out there, but, well, they’re not mine!!

I’m going to try to keep adding to this list on a regular basis as I find new tools, or decide to move on from others.

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After using many many commerce packages – and WRITING many many commerce packages from scratch, we’ve standardized on Magento Commerce for all new e-commerce sites.  It’s an awesome platform, with huge potential for customization and extension.  The list of existing modules (plug-ins basically) is very large and growing all the time.  This is the way to put up new e-commerce sites, no question about it!

We’ll be posting lots and lots of Magento information in the weeks and months to come as we continue on our journey with this great tool!

So, Ajax being the thing and all, I was hunting for a way to add an item to the cart using an Ajax call in Magento.  Recently, I noticed there was a module that apparently does this, but either I hadn’t seen that or it didn’t exist yet when I wrote this, so I hacked my way through it.

PHP isn’t my primary language – I come from the ASP, ASP.Net, C# world, but Magento was compelling enough that I’ve taken the leap.  I’m sure there are lots of things I could be doing better/differently here so if you’ve got some suggestions, I’m all ears!

Add to Cart Page

So first I needed an “Add to Cart” page (called – addToCart.php) that could be called from the client.  This page returns a result in JSON format.  The actual page also returns related items so we can try to cross sell the user, but I’ve removed that in this sample to make it simpler.

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