Design Disclosure – Portfolio & Personal Blog of Alistair Stead

After spending many hours crafting the perfect Magento module you need to package it either for easy distribution to your client/team or to upload to Magento Connect.

Package the extension

First of all I would recommend reading the following wiki page;

• Packaging a Magento Extension in 1.5+

Note – If your planning to upload your module to Magento Connect ensure the package name and the name you enter on Magento Connect match

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After spending many hours crafting the perfect Magento module you need to package it either for easy distribution to your client/team or to upload to Magento Connect. Package the extension First of all I would recommend reading the following wiki page;Packaging a Magento Extension in 1.5+Note - If your planning to upload your module to Magento ...

While developing new functionality in Magento one of the key elements that you must ensure continues to work as expected is the checkout. After all an commerce website that can not trade is rather worthless.

Using Mage-Test you can easily create integration tests for the checkout process. This will allow you to ensure that your store still functions correctly after you have made any modifications.

Automated Integration Test

The example test method below is run within a Mage-Test controller test case.

    /**
     * @author Alistair Stead
     * @test
     */
    public function magentoCheckoutIntegrationTest()
    {
        // Add the product to the basket
        $this->request->setMethod('POST')
            ->setPost(
                array(
                    'product' => '16',
                    'related_product' => '',
                    'qty' => '1'
                )
            );
        // Set an initial cookie so that the Magento cookie validation passes
        $this->request->setCookie('mage-test', true);
        $this->dispatch('/checkout/cart/add/');
        $this->assertResponseCode('302', '/checkout/cart/add/ has not redirected to the cart');
        $this->assertRedirectRegex("/^.*checkout.*$/", 'We are not directed to the checkout as expected');
        $this->reset();

        // Set the checkout as guest
        $this->request->setMethod('POST')
            ->setPost(
                array(
                    'method' => 'guest'
                )
            );
        $this->dispatch('/checkout/onepage/saveMethod/');
        $this->assertResponseCode('200', '/checkout/onepage/saveMethod/ has not responded as expected');
        $this->reset();

        // Save billing address
        $this->request->setMethod('POST')
            ->setPost(
                array(
                    'billing' => array(
                        'address_id' => '',
                        'firstname' => 'Authorize',
                        'lastname' => 'Capture',
                        'company' => '',
                        'email' => 'user@mage-test.co.uk',
                        'street' => array('Flat 14b', 'Baker Street'),
                        'city' => 'London',
                        'region_id' => '',
                        'postcode' => 'W1B OW3',
                        'country_id' => 'GB',
                        'telephone' => '+44 1234 123456',
                        'fax' => '+44 1234 123456',
                        'customer_password' => '',
                        'confirm_password' => '',
                        'save_in_address_book' => '1',
                        'use_for_shipping' => '1'
                    )
                )
            );
        $this->dispatch('/checkout/onepage/saveBilling/');
        $this->assertResponseCode('200', '/checkout/onepage/saveBilling/ has not responded as expected');
        $this->reset();

        // Set shipping method
        $this->request->setMethod('POST')
            ->setPost(
                array(
                    'shipping_method' => 'flatrate_flatrate'
                )
            );
        $this->dispatch('/checkout/onepage/saveShippingMethod/');
        $this->assertResponseCode('200', '/checkout/onepage/saveShippingMethod/ has not responded as expected');
        $this->reset();

        // Save payment
        $this->request->setMethod('POST')
            ->setPost(
                array(
                    'payment' => array(
                        'method' => 'paypal_direct',
                        'cc_type' => 'SM',
                        'cc_number' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
                        'cc_exp_month' => '1',
                        'cc_exp_year' => (date('Y') + 6),
                        'cc_cid' => '444',
                        'cc_ss_issue' => '1',
                        'cc_ss_start_month' => '1',
                        'cc_ss_start_year' => (date('Y') - 2)
                    )
                )
            );
        $this->dispatch('/checkout/onepage/savePayment/');
        $this->assertResponseCode('200', '/checkout/onepage/savePayment/ has not responded as expected');
        $this->reset();

        // Save order
        $this->request->setMethod('POST')
            ->setPost(
                array(
                    'payment' => array(
                        'method' => 'paypal_direct',
                        'cc_type' => 'SM',
                        'cc_number' => 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX',
                        'cc_exp_month' => '1',
                        'cc_exp_year' => (date('Y') + 6),
                        'cc_cid' => '444',
                        'cc_ss_issue' => '1',
                        'cc_ss_start_month' => '1',
                        'cc_ss_start_year' => (date('Y') - 2)
                    )
                )
            );
        $this->dispatch('/checkout/onepage/saveOrder/');
        $this->assertResponseCode('200', '/checkout/onepage/saveOrder/ has not responded as expected');
        // Decode the JSON response so that we can evaluate the success
        $data = json_decode($this->response->getBody());
        $this->assertTrue(
            $data->success,
            "Unexpected status expected result :: {$data->error_messages}"
        );
    }

You can use a PHPUnit data provider to supply a set of data fixtures to be used for credit card numbers, address information and other values. Using a data provider you can test for not only the successful checkout but also the error handling within the checkout process.

While developing new functionality in Magento one of the key elements that you must ensure continues to work as expected is the checkout. After all an commerce website that can not trade is rather worthless.Using Mage-Test you can easily create integration tests for the checkout process. This will allow you to ensure that your ...

While at Magento Imagine I have used the time where I was awake due to jet lag to finish a couple of new features to MageTool.

MageTool v0.3.0 now includes:

• Improved feedback when running commands for mage-core-resource
• Added commands to query and run the Magento indexer
• Added commands to query and run the Magento compiler
• Improved mage-core-cache commands
• Added functionality to run individual module setup classes directly
• Added functionality to dispatch Magento events to test your observers

All of these commands are intended to make development of Magento extensions easier and more streamlined. If you have feature requests please let me know. Or if you wish feel free to fork the project on GitHub and add the command that you need.

If you find and bugs with MageTool please raise a ticket on GitHub.

While at Magento Imagine I have used the time where I was awake due to jet lag to finish a couple of new features to MageTool.MageTool v0.3.0 now includes:Improved feedback when running commands for mage-core-resource Added commands to query and run the Magento indexer Added commands to query and run the Magento compiler Improved mage-core-cache commands Added functionality ...

If you have spent any time developing with Magento I expect that like me you have found a number of tasks you find yourself repeating many many times. While developing new modules or themes there are many times when you need to clear the Magento cache or even disable it completely. Now of course you can log into the admin system and carry out these actions but have you every thought there must be an easier way?

Many development frameworks or other open source projects have tool that can be used by developers to issue commands quickly and easily. Magento however does not have any built in tools to improve the development workflow. This is where MageTool fits in!

MageTool

How can MageTool help? Well hopefully in a number of ways. MageTool extends the existing Zend Framework command line tool zf, adding new commands that are specific to Magento development workflow. Rather then navigating the Magento admin system to clear cache or the enable or disable caching you can issue a simple command in your terminal window and achieve the same results. You can also modify the Magento configuration quickly or issue commands that will selectively update many configuration values.

In my standard development practices I maintain a number of Magento installs on different servers. These are used for Development, Staging and UAT each using different domains to access the stores. This means however that I often need to move databases between servers, resulting in the ‘base_url’ configuration being incorrect. This can be easily updated if you have database access and is fairly simple if you only have a couple of sites setup. However if you have more sites setup this can become very very difficult to maintain and calls into question the idea of working with many environment servers during development.

MageTool can help again in any situation where you need to move a Magento install and then update the ‘base_url’ configuration. You can construct a command that will quickly and easily update all URLs in the Magento config.

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If you have spent any time developing with Magento I expect that like me you have found a number of tasks you find yourself repeating many many times. While developing new modules or themes there are many times when you need to clear the Magento cache or even disable it completely. Now of course ...

In a previous post I described some of the reasons why you would want to store your session data in an alternate location to temporary files on your server. I explained the setup of database session storage using Doctrine and how this would allow you to take advantage of storing session data in a database. However depending upon your application requirements storing your session data in a database may cause excessive load on you database. You could of course use a separate dedicated database server to store your session data. However there is an alternate setup that will allow you to centralise your session storage ready for horizontal scaling of your hosting e.g. adding additional web servers.

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In a previous post I described some of the reasons why you would want to store your session data in an alternate location to temporary files on your server. I explained the setup of database session storage using Doctrine and how this would allow you to take advantage of storing session data in a ...