Ecommerce developers with Magento

One of my previous articles was a Magento Event Hooks. This one will be a practical example on using the event hooks. Although the more proper way would be to call them Observers, bare with me. I’m use to this “hooks”.

Here’s the walk-trough on how to add a new property (attribute) to an object (Mage_Sales_Model_Order object in our case).

To add an attribute to object, we need (the dirty way) 2 little steps

• Go to app/code/core/Mage folder. If you drill down into most of the folders and go to /Model subfolder there you will see /Entity subfolder under /Model for most of the stuff (modules) under /Mage. For our example we go to app/code/core/Mage/Sales/Model/Entity/Setup.php file. This Setup.php file holds Objects fields definitions in database. We need to add new fields to public function getDefaultEntities(). Once again, this is the “quick” and “dirty” way of adding new attributes. The “propper” way would be to create the sql file and update config file to read the new sql file and… Whatever, I haven’t got the whole day Here is the code in my example, that I added to the array in public function getDefaultEntities().

  'inchoo_custom_info' => array(
  'type'                          => 'text',
  'backend'                       => '',
  'frontend'                      => '',
  'label'                         => 'Extra info',
  'input'                         => 'textarea',
  'class'                         => '',
  'source'                        => '',
  'global'                        => Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Attribute::SCOPE_STORE,
  'visible'                       => true,
  'required'                      => false,
  'user_defined'                  => false,
  'default'                       => '',
  'searchable'                    => false,
  'filterable'                    => false,
  'comparable'                    => false,
  'visible_on_front'              => true,
  'visible_in_advanced_search'    => false,
  'unique'                        => false,
  ),
  

  Basically you can copy-paste some existing attribute that suites you the most and just change the array key name.

• Run this code only once (you can place it inside any file, like index.php or view.phtml or any other that you will execute) then uncomment or remove this code.

  $setup = new Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Setup('core_setup');
  $AttrCode = 'inchoo_custom_info';
  
  $settings = array('position' => 1, 'is_required' => 0);
  $setup->addAttribute('11', $AttrCode, $settings);
  

  NOTE: In code above, note the line $setup->addAttribute(’11′, $AttrCode, $settings). You probabily wonder where did I pool the number “11″ from? If you open your database (with any tool), and go to sales_order table, you will notice entity_type_id column. Each and every entry in sales_order table has the same value for entity_type_id column. In my Magento installation, this value is “11″. Keep in mind that this does not have to mean yours will also be the same.

  To confirm everything went ok, just Search the database for the “inchoo_custom_info” (or whatever you used for attribute name).

Ok, now that we added new attribute (property) to Order object, we will go on to Observer part. We will create a hook that will watch for successfull checkout process and trigger appropriate code execution. In my example I needed to add some extra info to order upon it’s successfull creation. Meaning as soon as checkout process is successfully executed, order is stored in database with some extra info I saved in its previously created field “inchoo_custom_info”.

Here is my Observer file, I called it Observer.php and it’s saved under app/code/local/Inchoo/HookSystem/Model/Observer.php.

< ?php

class Inchoo_HookSystem_Model_Observer
{
/**
* Event Hook: checkout_type_onepage_save_order
* @param $observer Varien_Event_Observer
*/

public function hookToOrderSaveEvent()
{
/**
* NOTE:
* Order has already been saved, now we simply add some stuff to it,
* that will be saved to database. We add the stuff to Order object property
* called "inchoo_custom_info"
*/
$order = new Mage_Sales_Model_Order();
$incrementId = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getLastRealOrderId();

$order->loadByIncrementId($incrementId);

$extraInfo = array(
'shirt_color' => 'Freakin cool blue color',
'developer_is_freak'    => true,
'coded_by'        => 'Branko Ajzele, Web Application Developer'
);

$extraInfo = serialize($extraInfo);

$order->setData('inchoo_custom_info', $extraInfo);
$order->save();

}
}

Since this is a module, we also need to add some config files. Here is the content of my app/code/local/Inchoo/HookSystem/etc/config.xml

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>

<global>
<models>
<hooksystem>
<class>Inchoo_HookSystem_Model</class>
</hooksystem>
</models>
</global>

<frontend>
<events>
<checkout_onepage_controller_success_action>
<observers>
<hooksystem_order_success>
<type>singleton</type>
<class>hooksystem/observer</class>
<method>hookToOrderSaveEvent</method>
</hooksystem_order_success>
</observers>
</checkout_onepage_controller_success_action>
</events>
</frontend>

</config>

And one more config file to add to app/etc/modules/Inchoo_HookSystem.xml.

< ?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<inchoo_hooksystem>
<active>true</active>
<codepool>local</codepool>
</inchoo_hooksystem>
</modules>
</config>

And for the final step, open the app/design/adminhtml/default/mytheme/template/sales/order/view/tab/info.phtml file and add the following to it:

< ?php /** START CUSTOM Coded by Branko Ajzele | branko.ajzele@surgeworks.com */ ?>
< ?php
/**
* NOTE:
* 'inchoo_custom_info' assumes you have added new attribute/property to Sale/Order entity
* Please use serialize and unserialize with 'inchoo_custom_info'
*/
$extraInfo = $_order->getData('inchoo_custom_info');
?>
< ?php if($extraInfo != null or !empty($extraInfo)): ?>
< ?php $extraInfo = unserialize($extraInfo) ?>
<div class="entry-edit">
<div class="entry-edit-head">
<h4 class="icon-head head-products">Extra order info</h4>
</div>
</div>
<div style="height: 30px; padding: 10px; border: #ccc 1px solid; margin-bottom: 20px;">
<pre>
< ?php print_r($extraInfo) ?>
</pre>
</div>
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
<div class="clear"></div>
< ?php endif; ?>
< ?php /** END CUSTOM Coded by Branko Ajzele | branko.ajzele@surgeworks.com */ ?>

Feel free to remove all my comments. One thing to keep in mind here, the url path has the “mytheme” pointing to my custom theme. Usefull if you do not wish to edit default admin tempate files. Cooworker and friend of mine, Ivan Weiller, wrote a nice little plugin for switching the admin themes (to avoid editing the default one). You can download Admintheme module here.

Important: Our colour highlighting plugin on this site seems to lower-case some tag names on xml code, so keep that in mind if you experience some trouble with sample code.

Huh, we are done! Final result is shown on image.

Cheers…

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