Category: Magento

Code snippets and server related goodies that relate to Magento

Magneto 1 – Customer database full of spam

So, one day, I noticed one of my servers was sending a ton of emails out to dodgy looking ….@mail.ru   or  ….@list.ru  addresses.  UH OH!

At first I thought the mail server on my webserver had been compromised. On further investigation I managed to see to that the contents of these mails were account registration validation emails.  Looking in the Magento admin (Customers>Manage Customers) I saw them…thousands of new customer registrations – with Russian copy in the name fields and, on the whole [something]@mail.ru  or  [something]@list.ru   addresses but also some with [something]@gmail.com.

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Magento 1.9x Write to Custom Log File

To write information to your own custom log file, say to trace errors in a custom module, track odd behaviour or record that a certain event has happened, you use Mage::log()

Mage::log(‘<WHAT TO WRITE IN THE LOG>’, null, ‘FILENAME.log’, true);

If you want to log the output of an array, use print_r but with the second parameter set to true – this converts the output to a string.

e.g. Mage::log(print_r($myArray,true), null, ‘FILENAME.log’, true);

Magento: Get a custom variable value in a phtml file

I think custom variables were originally designed to be used in emails but I use them within the main site for little bits of information whose value needs to change on a per store/language basis.

This is how you get a custom variable inside a phtml file:

Mage::getModel(‘core/variable’)->setStoreId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getStoreId())->loadByCode(‘[variable-code]’)->getValue(‘plain’);

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Magento Custom Layout Update: Robots No-index

You may well have certain pages that you do not want Google, et al, to index in the SERPS.  Examples include log in pages, thank you pages, and perhaps content of little search value such as legal blurb.  This can let you control a little more, albeit very slightly, the pages you want Google to show and those that you don’t.

You can use the Custom Layout Update control (in the Custom Design tab) to set the robots control on a per-page basis.  Simply add the following code into the Custom Layout Update textarea in the Magento admin:

<reference name=”head”>
<action method=”setRobots”><value>NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW</value></action>
</reference>

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Magento 1.9: Useful Collection Snippets

Some useful bits and bobs to do with ordering, size-limiting and getting data out of collections that I tend to often need to look up.

Limiting the Size of a Collection
Adding isActiveFilter
Loading Friendly URLs/Rewrites
Filter Collection by Attribute and Conditionals List
Get First Item From Collection

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Magento (v1.x) : Show full page action name (module_controller_action)

Sometimes, when editing a page you need to know what the full module_controller_action route is so you can modify the correct blocks in the layout files.  Here is a simple bit of code to display the full action name in the form of module_controller_action.

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Magento: Get store address, phone number or other config information

Here is how to get the the store config information for the phone number:

<?php echo Mage::getStoreConfig(‘general/store_information/phone’);?>

And for the address:

<?php echo Mage::getStoreConfig(‘general/store_information/address’);?>

In fact you can get all sorts of interesting “config” data out using this  getStoreConfig method.

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Magento: Programmatically added products do not appear in store until you load and save them in admin.

Ok, so you have written an import script to add a whole load of products into a store but they just don’t show on the front end.  There they are in the admin but not on the front end.  Here is one possible cause. Continue reading Magento: Programmatically added products do not appear in store until you load and save them in admin.

Magento Error: Integrity constraint violation: 1062 Duplicate entry ‘123456’ for key ‘PRIMARY’

Following a database export/import as part of a migration  or copy to a new development environment some database problems can occur, even if the entire db is copied.  Sometimes the problem can be the log files references, as is likely with the error:

Integrity constraint violation: 1062 Duplicate entry  ‘123456’ for key ‘PRIMARY’

Where 123456 is some number.
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