I was playing around with Zend Framework today, checking out available classes and methods. My eyes filled with yoj when I came across Zend_Wildfire_Plugin_FirePhp class. It’s located under /Zend/Wildfire/Plugin/FirePhp.php folder in ZendFramework. It’s around 600 hundred lines or so. What’s cool about this class is that it has this cool method you can use to shoot out messages to FireBug. If my info is correct, this class is added to ZendFramework from version 1.6. As of time of this writing, latest version of Magento is 1.2.0.1 and it comes packed with ZendFramework 1.7.2 which is also the latest version as of time of this writing. So, there you go, bingo. We now have this cool little class that can save as a bunch of time (or not).

My point is, the PHP debugging solution generally suck. I know, it’s a hard word, and I like to avoid statements like that as much as I can, but sometimes the feeling just take you over

I wrote a little function that you can use in Magento to output messages to FireBug. This, off course, is just my version of doing things. Feel free to implement some different solution if you find my lacking in some aspect.

Here is my function

/**
*
* @author Branko Ajzele
* @license GPL
*
* @param object $var Object we wish to debug in FireBug
* @param string $label Nice little label we wish to add so we can see it in FireBug
* @param string $style String holding one of values: ‘LOG’, ‘INFO’, ‘WARN’, ‘ERROR’, ‘TRACE’, ‘EXCEPTION’, ‘TABLE’
* @return void Return null if Mage::setIsDeveloperMode(false) otherwise return message to browser
*/
function acl($var, $label, $style = ‘LOG’)
{
if(Mage::getIsDeveloperMode())
{
$request = new Zend_Controller_Request_Http();
$response = new Zend_Controller_Response_Http();
$channel = Zend_Wildfire_Channel_HttpHeaders::getInstance();
$channel->setRequest($request);
$channel->setResponse($response);

/*
* Start output buffering
*/
ob_start();

Zend_Wildfire_Plugin_FirePhp::send($var, $label, $style);

/*
Style     Description
LOG     Displays a plain log message
INFO     Displays an info log message
WARN     Displays a warning log message
ERROR     Displays an error log message that increments Firebug’s error count
TRACE     Displays a log message with an expandable stack trace
EXCEPTION     Displays an error long message with an expandable stack trace
TABLE     Displays a log message with an expandable table

*/

/*
* Flush log data to browser
*/
$channel->flush();
$response->sendHeaders();
}
else
{
return null;
}
}

All you need to do is to place it inside the index.php file, the one inside the root Magento folder. You need to place it after Mage::setIsDeveloperMode(true); statement. Which by the way you need to uncomment (in development environment). That’s it, your done.

Now all you need to do is go into one of your template files like /catalog/product/view.phtml and call this function like

acl($this->debug(), ‘Product view page aka view.phtml VAR: $this’);
or
acl($_product->debug(), ‘Product view page aka view.phtml VAR: $_product’);

I provided a screenshot below for you to see the result of the two function calls.

And here is the full version of my index.php file.

To summarize. For this to work you need

• Firefox with installed FireBug and FirePHP
• Copy - Paste my function from above to your index.php file
• Just call acl() function with appropriate params inside one of your template files

Although this may not be the “happiest” soultion, since some messages get duplicated in FireBug if you call acl function from controllers, hope some of you find this useful.

echo ‘<pre>’;
print_r(get_class_methods(get_class($this)));
echo ‘</pre>’;

to get the list of available methods. But is there an easier and most important, faster way to list methods and other relevant object class stuff? If, ba default, you write “$this->” then press “Ctrl + Space” in ZendStudio or NetBeans6.5 you would get… nothing. Both of these IDE’s cannot recognize the object context.

If you are using ZendStudio there is a cool trick you can do in order to enable code completion upon $this object inside your template.phtml files.

All you need to do is to write something like

/* @var $this Companyname_Modulename_Block_Myentity */

Now if you were to write something like “$this->” and press “Ctrl + Space” you would see Code Assistant showing you the list of available methods. What’s cool is that it also shows you the list of inherited methods.

This approach however does not work for NetBeans.

Just in case some of you got into the same situation, let me save you some trouble. Golden rule, do not forget to assign a name to a module. Will save you some headache.

I provided my screen shot below for you to see what I’m talking about.

I suggest you download it and try it out. Must say it looks great. I’m considering the possibility to purchase a license. I love the latests NetBeans because of it’s support for PHP, however seeing ZendStudio got my heart beating faster

Have a look… see for your self. Please shoot some thoughts and comments.

I provided two of the screenshots for you to see what am I talking about.

And here is one way how you can fix this.

Open the following file
/app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Block/Product/View/Attributes.php

Now on line 71 you will see the following code
$value = $this->htmlEscape($value);

Just replace it with
$value = $value;

My first impression on new Magento? Behaves faster… not sure, time will show

If you are just starting out with GIT, I would strongly suggest you check out the above video. After that I suggest you jump to gitcasts.com. There are some great screencasts to get you started on using GIT. And finally, go to official GITs documentation at git.or.cz.

Finally there is github.com, the GIT hosting solution. All of these are free so they should get you up n running with GIT in a day or so.

Although GIT is somewhat harder to learn than Subversion is, these materials should get you up n running.

Dynamic addition of attributes during application lifetime

Entities (dealers) with dynamicly added attributes

Main idea of building the plugin using EAV database model came from Magento platform. My job focus is entirely on Magento and Wordpress development so some ideas and application design philosophie of Magento seemed so tasty so I decided to implement them in WP plugin. Still need to implement the Google Maps and photo upload to specific dealer (entity), then some testing and possible code refactoring until I release it. Not sure on the license yet. Will keep you posted.

If some of you are looking for a quality custom WordPress plugin development, feel free to contact us at Surgeworks or Inchoo.

Wish you all the best for holidays… Cheers…