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Magento layout xml files can be really confusing. Here is a post to make them even more confusing, but really useful. I won’t cover how to create a layout xml file here, I’ll cover that in a different post. I’m going to show you how to re-use the handles in your module. Let’s say your […]
class My_Custom_Block extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_View_Abstract { protected function _construct() { // the $groupId make it so each customer group will be cached separately $groupId = Mage::getSingleton(‘customer/session’)->getCustomerGroupId(); $this->addData(array( ‘cache_lifetime’ => 5600, ‘cache_tags’ => array(Mage_Core_Model_Store::CACHE_TAG, Mage_Cms_Model_Block::CACHE_TAG), // you can add anything to the cache_key to make it cache separate versions for different customers and stores ‘cache_key’ => “custom_unique_name_{$groupId}” […]
You can create an XML sitemap for you Magento store by logging into your administration panel and going to Catalog > Google Sitemap. This interface is pretty straightforward, just be aware that each store must have its own sitemap. Also note that the the Path must be writable by the file system. When you click […]
Magento controllers come built in with a _redirect() function that gives you the option to add parameters. This includes GET parameters and Magento’s path parameters. This is the basic syntax: $this->_redirect($url,$paramsArray); The $url parameter is the magento url where you would like to redirect to. The $paramsArray is an array that contains the parameters you […]
The days of using crontab to run cron jobs for your Magento installation are long over. Since Magento Community Edition 1.8 (Enterprise Edition 1.13) cron jobs can now be configured using the Magento configuration. Initial Setup Before you can schedule your cron jobs, you have to set up Magento’s cron.php or cron.sh using crontab. This […]
There are a few things to be aware of when saving dates in Magento. Magento comes built in with a lot of tools that allow you to work with dates, learning to use these tools will help you improve the consistency and quality of your Magento code as well as increasing your Magento skills. In […]
There are some situations when you may need to change the way Magento core files work. But you must do it the right way, you can’t just start editing files in app/code/core/. Why shouldn’t you edit core files directly? To put it in simple terms: so you can install updates. If you change the core […]
In order to address the most common complaints about the generally understood MVC framework pattern, Magento’s MVC pattern has been customized to be more abstract and thus more flexible. The pattern of Magneto’s MVC framework goes something like this: A URL is intercepted by a single PHP file This PHP file instantiates a Magento application […]
What happens to all of the xml configuration files that are required for all modules, classes, and just about anything you want to do with Magento? Well, they all get added to the Magento Config. The Magento Config is basically just one large xml file that acts as the brain of your Magento installation. Whenever […]
Disclaimer: This is not best practices, use the Magento cron system whenever possible. This method should only be used when working on legacy systems that use the server crontab. Any event observers set in the frontend or adminhtml typically won’t fire when a server crontab processes a scheduled job. Any easy solution for this is […]