Magento Tips and Snippets
Magento has become quite a popular system in recent months.. snippets, tutorials, and other resources are in high demand for the system. Let’s look at some pros and cons of Magento and then some useful code snippets..
The Good
All around, Magento beats the competition. Here are just a few highlights if you’re not familiar with Magento:
- Magento is Object Oriented
- Magento is secure and scalable
- Magento has a large community that is rapidly growing
- Magento can be extended very easily
- Magento allows for multiple stores and store fronts
The Bad
Magento has a few things that I’m not too excited about:
- Magento is HUGE and bulky
- Magento lacks a WYSIWIG and CMS
- Magento uses a lot of JavaScript in a bad way
Some Useful Code
I’ll feed you baby birds..
Add a CMS Static Block to a page:
Within Magento:
{{block type="cms/block" block_id="identifier"}}
With PHP:
getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('identifier')->toHtml() ?>
Check with User Group a customer belongs to (based upon Group ID)
getCustomerGroupId(); ?>
Check if user is logged in:
helper('customer')->isLoggedIn(); ?>
Display products from a specific category on the page:
Many people ask how to display products on the home page.. this is the easiest and most universal solution. Replace category ID with whatever category you want to display
{{block type="catalog/product_list" template="catalog/product/list.phtml" catagory_id="0"}}Shortcuts:
Store URL within Magento:
{{store url=""}}Define a new CMS Page Layout
Depending on what version of Magento you’re running, this may be different, but in the 1.3x series, this is how you’d define a new page layout. We’ll define a layout called home for this example:
/app/code/core/Mage/Page/etc/config.xml
<page> <layouts> <empty module="page" translate="label"> <label>Empty</label> <template>page/one-column.phtml</template> <layout_handle>page_empty</layout_handle> </empty> <one_column module="page" translate="label"> <label>1 column</label> <template>page/1column.phtml</template> <layout_handle>page_one_column</layout_handle> </one_column> <two_columns_left module="page" translate="label"> <label>2 columns with left bar</label> <template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template> <layout_handle>page_two_columns_left</layout_handle> </two_columns_left> <two_columns_right module="page" translate="label"> <label>2 columns with right bar</label> <template>page/2columns-right.phtml</template> <layout_handle>page_two_columns_right</layout_handle> </two_columns_right> <three_columns module="page" translate="label"> <label>3 columns</label> <template>page/3columns.phtml</template> <layout_handle>page_three_columns</layout_handle> </three_columns> <home> <label>Home</label> <template>page/home.phtml</template> <layout_handle>page_home</layout_handle> </home> </layouts> </page>
Please understand that this is editing the core and will not be protected in an upgrade/update. To properly define this to be compatible with future upgrades, you’ll need to define a simple module to override the core with a local file.
Bài viết rất hữu ích. Cảm ơn bạn.
How can I call and list the subcategories of a specific category? All the navigation and layered navigations lists all the categories. I want to just call a specific category and list its subcategories. Please help. Thanks.
I have the same request as Tom. Thanks!
Look at the next post after this one.. dedicated to displaying categories: http://thinkclay.com/technology/magento-display-categories-in-sidebar
Good stuff.
Good tip on how to display a category block on a page.
Looking for one step farther on this one – any idea how to display products tagged with a certain tag?