For starters, lets create a customer and establish a login session right away for this newly created customer. Here is the code sample that does just that.

$customer = Mage::getModel('customer/customer');
//$customer  = new Mage_Customer_Model_Customer();
 
 
$password = '123456';
$email = 'ajzele@mymail.com';
 
$customer->setWebsiteId(Mage::app()->getWebsite()->getId());
$customer->loadByEmail($email);
//Zend_Debug::dump($customer->debug()); exit;
 
if(!$customer->getId()) {
 
	$customer->setEmail($email);
	$customer->setFirstname('Johnny');
	$customer->setLastname('Doels');
	$customer->setPassword($password);
}
 
try {
	$customer->save();
	$customer->setConfirmation(null);
	$customer->save();
 
	//Make a "login" of new customer
	Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->loginById($customer->getId());
}
 
catch (Exception $ex) {
	//Zend_Debug::dump($ex->getMessage());
}

You can run this code from anywhere in Magento (model, view, controller…), it should do the trick.

At this point we have created new customer and made him “look like” he is logged in, or shall I say we established a session with his new credentials.

Now lets add a shipping and billing address to customer. Remember, these are needed in order to do checkout. Here is the code that programatically adds the shipping and billing address. In my case, I am using same address for both shipping and billing. If you prefer you can extend the logic and create two separate addresses and make one default for billing, other for shipping.

//Build billing and shipping address for customer, for checkout
$_custom_address = array (
	'firstname' => 'Branko',
	'lastname' => 'Ajzele',
	'street' => array (
		'0' => 'Sample address part1',
		'1' => 'Sample address part2',
	),
 
	'city' => 'Osijek',
	'region_id' => '',
	'region' => '',
	'postcode' => '31000',
	'country_id' => 'HR', /* Croatia */
	'telephone' => '0038531555444',
);
 
$customAddress = Mage::getModel('customer/address')
//$customAddress = new Mage_Customer_Model_Address();
$customAddress->setData($_custom_address)
			->setCustomerId($customer->getId())
			->setIsDefaultBilling('1')
			->setIsDefaultShipping('1')
			->setSaveInAddressBook('1');
 
try {
	$customAddress->save();
}
catch (Exception $ex) {
	//Zend_Debug::dump($ex->getMessage());
}
 
Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getQuote()->setBillingAddress(Mage::getSingleton('sales/quote_address')->importCustomerAddress($customAddress));

Now that we have a logged in newly created customer with assigned addresses, lets add some products to the cart in his name. Here is the sample code.

/* If we wish to load some product by some attribute value diferent then id */
$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection()
	/* Remember, you can load/find product via any attribute, better if its attribute with unique value */
	->addAttributeToFilter('sku', 'some-sku-value')
	->addAttributeToSelect('*')
	->getFirstItem();
 
/* Do a full product load, otherwise you might get some errors related to stock item */
$product->load($product->getId());
 
$cart = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/cart');
 
/* We want to add only the product/products for this user and do so programmatically, so lets clear cart before we start adding the products into it */
$cart->truncate();
$cart->save();
$cart->getItems()->clear()->save();			
 
try {
	/* Add product with custom oprion? =>  some-custom-option-id-here: value to be read from database or assigned manually, hardcoded? Just example*/
	//$cart->addProduct($product, array('options'=> array('some-custom-option-id-here' => 'Some value goes here');
	$cart->save();				
}
catch (Exception $ex) {
	echo $ex->getMessage();
}
 
unset($product);

And for the very end, the actual process of going trough “One Page Checkout” under the hood. Here is the sample code.

$storeId = Mage::app()->getStore()->getId();
 
$checkout = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/type_onepage');
 
$checkout->initCheckout();
 
$checkout->saveCheckoutMethod('register');
 
$checkout->saveShippingMethod('flatrate_flatrate');
 
$checkout->savePayment(array('method'=>'checkmo'));
 
try {
	$checkout->saveOrder();
}
catch (Exception $ex) {
	//echo $ex->getMessage();
}			
 
/* Clear the cart */
$cart->truncate();
$cart->save();
$cart->getItems()->clear()->save();		
 
/* Logout the customer you created */
Mage::getSingleton('customer/session')->logout();

And thats it. This code was tested on Magento 1.3 version, but I see no reason why it would not work on latest (as of time of this writing) 1.4.0.1 version.

In any case, you hope you find it useful. As always, word of advice, this is just for testing/education purpose so please do not blindly embed it on live sites.

Cheers.

The coolest thing about the implemented WYSIWYG editor is that it allows you to upload all sort of media files next to your content, somewhat like Wordpress does. This is a great boost in usability, hopefully it will cut down on the Wordpress + Magento mixes we have been doing in several projects.

Widgets functionality speaks for it self. We have all seen what Wordpress widgets can do, its time to play with Magento ones -Here is one of my previous articles on Widgets to get you started.

Good job Varien. Looking forward coding for this one

Cheers.

Download Ajzele_CustomProduct.

You can read more about it here.

After hearing the long howto presentation from our designer, let me share some of my thoughts on how to build a theme that will most likely be a perfect balance of lightweight and usable, possible innovative, financially balanced in terms of needed total amount of hours for front-end development etc…

Here is my personal golder rule for the Magento theme development: “Skinning, not theming!“.

Magetno’s large number of elements and stages on front-end, wast number of view files in “app/design/frontend/default” make it extremely time consuming to do any challenging design changes. In my humble opinion, “app/design/frontend/default” location is the middle ground of the entire development that needs to be done on given site. What should be done is to move the designer to work more in “/skin/frontend/default” folder and developer to work more in “app/code/local” folder. This way you would get more clearer approach to project. Developers would be focused on the actual code while the designer would be responsible for making such design that complies to the existing class rules and the rest of the stuff in /skin folder.

Poking around “app/design/frontend/default” is something both developers and designers do. As mentioned previously, given the amount of files in these folders, this process is extremely time consuming. So, the obvious question is: Can one make such design that minimizes the use of theme folder files modifications?

If the store design is made such to comply more to a “skin” than “theme” term, this would enable you to be far more faster in building your client shops. Besides speed, your developers could then really focus on their work, isolating new full-fledged features instead of wasting time on “masking” or modifying the certain areas of Magento front-end. As a result, you will most likely be more precise in your estimates once you know your theme would be design such that it clearly integrates with default Magento front-end.

Surely, designers would be first to say: “Wait a minute, if all I do is skinning to comply to already written css rules and layout, then what freedom do I have in design? How can I deliver breathtaking stuff to my client!”. I would have to say that arguments like these are not valid. Before I became developer, I was working several years as a freelance web designer. Great simplistic design is far more harder to achieve then to throw in bunch of everything just to satisfy the form. When talking in terms of Magento, I noticed one lacking flaw in most of the site owners request. They tend to focus on insignificant layout changes, and the goody-looking-flashing-popping stuff then on the real content. Its like they thinking: Why write five words of product description text when I can throw in some flashy looking non-related photo here, etc.

To get back to the possible “designer dilemma” in terms of “Skinning, not theming” context. Great design stuff can be achieved just by changing few header and footer background images, menu navigation elements, widths, etc… Stuff that will make you wonder, is this Magento or? All it takes, is a different look at things.

“Mostly” in terms of there is a little devil in me that keeps grabbing for more each time I establish a “I know this pretty good” relationship towards some technology, which relates to my work on Magento platform. It was a bumpy ride for the last year and a half, getting to know Magento and building stuff on top of it.

“Recently” I started studying the Python language and Django framework. Its my n-th time I’m trying to give myself mastering Python and this time I’m determined to do so. It’s not to say that Python is better than PHP or vice versa, its just to satisfy the little devil in me, hungry for new stuff. I have this desire of building my own web shop solution, primarily for large web shop systems with several thousand products or so, with prime focus on speed and usability.

However, these days I am a bit busy with “getting back to faculty”. My official faculty degree is that of Electrical Engineer, which I got in year 2006 on Faculty of Electrical Engineering in my home town Osijek, Croatia. To stay on top of the bureaucracy system, I decided to get back to the faculty and take on the necessary exams to get my diploma recognized in the “Bologna process“, plus I am making it official now with switching to Computer Science domain

And cream on top if it is me getting married next year (that is, if everything stays OK until then ).

That about summarizes the current state of my life

Wish you all happy holidays and a new 2010 year. Hope it gets and stays fruitful on both business and personal area.

Cheers.

Download [ ActiveCodeline_WidgetOne.tar ].

Hope you’ll find it useful.

Lets face it, if you are running a web shop, then usability must be one of your prime concerns. How bad would you feel if you knew you had a customer that added bunch of stuff to cart just to say “To hell with it” when he reaches the annoying and non user friendly checkout process.

As I mentioned previously, several of our clients have already asked us to develop a simpler version of One Page checkout for them, however they soon gave up when presented with development cost. Magento is no picnic, coding something like this requires time and knowledge.

Here is one extension that promises to simplify the checkout process, its called OneStepCheckout.

If you come from WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or similar PHP platforms, you are most likely use to not paying your plugins, modules etc. As I noted previously, professional Magento development is not an easy task, so paying for an extension that can boost your user experience, thus possibly increasing sales, should not be a problem for any serious site owner.

Installation of OneStepCheckout extension is a breeze, plus if you stuck, they provide installation services. Attached are few screenshots with some comments for you to see the final result. Numerous configurations options make it even more compelling.

Just by point and click you (your client) can decide to turn off certain input fields like City, Telephone, Company etc.

OneStepCheckout extension comes in two flavors, Standard and Enterprise. Screenshots below show Enterprise version.

What else to say, I was thrilled with this one, so much that I decided to reference it in my sidebar.

Hope this short review was useful to some.

Cheers.

One of the most annoying part of work for me is the estimates part. How do you know if you are good in giving cost estimate? Is it when you get the client say “Yes” at any cost, or is it when you get client say “Yes” on mutual satisfaction?

Practical example: How much would you estimate the task of adding a simple menu of just tree or four items in footer, that can be controlled trough CMS static block?

Task above is easy, experienced Magento developer can do it in cca 10-20min at most, its easy as copy-pasting the code snippet. However, this is merely time needed for doing the actual work. What about time needed to setup the FTP, find and modify the files, login to Magento and create CMS static block, post a reply on the resolved task… When you calculate all this in estimate, you soon come to total of hour or even two for a task this easy.

When you work on giving estimates and bill “by a minute”, you are soon to be facing a strange issue. Lets say a realistic scenario for the above example would be cca 1-2 hours, if you are to offer a quality implementation of clients request that would not break on next page. If you multiply that with your hourly fee, lets say $60/hour, you get estimate of $60-$120 for this simple task. And thats not even including the cost of giving the estimate (which can be time consuming on larger inquiries).

Let me tell you, client wont be happy and you will most likely look like a money thirsty blood sucker to him. To him, all he want is a link or two in footer. He does not see the difference of hard coding the links in code and implementing them trough some static block. To you as a experienced Magento developer, hard coding this kind of stuff is surely out of option. But this is reality, I dare you to say otherwise.

Keep in mind that when doing a “full” project development, tasks like these are resolved much faster. Given that they are part of a development “workflow”, they are resolved as you go. My point is, that when you are being hired to work on a partial/specific task only, you are most likely to loose big time with reasonable cost estimates.

What most of our clients do not understand is that Magento is not WordPress (no disrespect). If you want to code properly, and with upgrade-ability in mind, then everything in Magento becomes so time consuming.

After few minutes of debugging I realized what caused the issue. Before I did an upgrade of the site, I pulled entire site locally on my dev machine and set it up so that it runs fully local. Meaning I wanted to upgrade site “offline” on my local machine where its faster and I am not limited to hosting server environment. In the process of “downloading” entire live site to my local machine I forgot the fact that I am using Windows. Windows operating system does not support having two directories, one next to another with the same name like “F” and “f”. It is not case sensitive. Due to this, all my images went to one (first in line) folder.

Once I successfully updated the site and uploaded it to live (Linux powered) server, I ended up with missing photos for about half of my products. Reason being the simple change in folder name from capital to small letter or vice versa.

If you ever do upgrade like I, and come across missing images scenario, try to remember this one.

Cheers