Written by diglin
|
17 October 2011
It is with a great pleasure that the Magento Core Team published a public version of the development Magento 2 and information about it. This new version is still in development and will be available when stability, code quality, features and documentation will be finished. It is expected in one year (end 2012). Lots of lack blamed for version < Magento 2 are going to be history (we hope).
The target of this new version is to provide a better documentation (a complete wiki for store owner, developer, system administrator or designer target public is available and still in progress), an improvement of the performance / security / scalability (EAV still exists), PHPUnit Tests and Automatic Static Code Analysis Tests (including PHP Detector Copy/Paste, PHP Code Sniffer, PHP Mess Detector), easier and better support of multilanguage, etc.
But don't worry dear Magento 1.x developers, not everything has been changed. At the program, refactoring of some classes, naming convention and templating and skin folders restructuration have been done at the moment. We will see some changes in this first article and how to handle it to upgrade your extensions. Remember, it's still in development, so the information are there just to keep you informed. I will try to prvovide you up to date information until the official release on this website.
If you are a third party developer, you should follow the recommandations and best practises based on Zend Framework Best Practises and Magento Best Practises (Licenses and category/package/author tags in the docblock of class' header) to migrate your extensions.
You will find all necessary links about the Magento 2 development version (documentation, svn, tools) at the bottom of this article. But first, I did for you, a resume of the significant changes done between Magento 1.x and 2.x based on the documenation available in the Magento 2 Wiki.
FILE STRUCTURE CHANGES FROM 1.X TO 2.X
New folders:
| /dev |
internal tools and tests. Previously: /shell, /tests, /tools to /dev/shell, /dev/tests, /dev/tools |
| /pub |
All public content: /pub/images, /pub/jslib, /pub/skin, /pub/error - Fallback/Materialized files are stored in this folder |
Removed folders:
| /includes |
Compiler feature is removed |
| /downloader |
Folder removed but the Magento Connect feature is moved to /app/code/core/Mage/Connect/ |
Template / Layout folders
One of the main changes is that base theme files and folders (layout, template) are moved to each module folder in a folder named "view". It means you will get for your module the following structure app / code / <code_pool> / <Namespace> / <Module> / view / <area> / *
- Namespace = your company name or else
- Module = module name ;-)
- code pool = core, local or community
- area = frontend or backend
- package
- theme
Here are some examples of the migrated folders:
- for emails template, FROM app / locale / en_US / emails / * .html TO app / code / <code pool> / <Namespace> / <Module> / view / *.html
- for skin files of a specific module in adminhtml area (js, css, skin images), FROM skin / adminhtml / default / default / * TO app / code / <code pool> / <Namespace> / <Module> / skin / adminhtml / *
- for skin files of a specific module in frontend area (js, css, skin images), FROM skin / frontend / default / default / * TO app / code / <code pool> / <Namespace> / <Module> / skin / frontend / *
- for layout and template files (*.phtml), FROM app / design / frontend / default / default / layout (or template) / * TO app / code / <code pool> / <Namespace> / <Module> / view / layout.xml as a convention (or path/to/file/*.phtml)
And non-base theme files (confer Magento wiki: theme files that overlap base files in modules) are structured as follow:
- An overwritten template file, FROM app / design / frontend / <package> / <theme> / template / <module_alias> / path / to / template.phtml TO app / design / frontend / <package> / <theme> / <Namespace_Module> / path / to / template.phtml
A Module directory structure will lookt at this:
__/app/code/<Pool>/<Namespace>
|__/<Module>
|__/Block
| |-- Sample.php
|__/view
| |__/adminhtml
| |__/frontend
| | |-- layout.xml
| | |-- sample.phtml
| |__/install
| |-- contact_email.html
|__/skin
|__/adminhtml
|__/frontend
|__/images
| |-- image.jpg
|-- favicon.ico
|
Source
Magento Wiki Module View
Fallback/Materialization mechanism
The fallback mechanism still exists and if you want to overwrite a template or layout file, you still need to use the folder structure app / design / <area> / <package> / <theme> / <Namespace_Module> / layout.xml (or path / to / template.phtml). Layout and template folders doesn't anymore exist but you will notice that you need to use the combination Namespace and Module as a folder name for the layout and template files.
All public content are stored in the folder /pub, it contains static files like images, javascript or css and are copied from the module skin folder. They will be automatically redundantly saved once or after an update, following its folder structure in the module view folder, to the /pub folder to keep only this folder visible to public and make skin modular too.
You will get the following structure for the static files:
- / pub / skin / <area> / <package> / <theme> / *
- / pub / skin / <area> / <package> / <theme> / <Namespace_Module> / *
For the fallback mechanism, you can still use a design package folder structure:
__/design
|__/frontend
|__/<packageName>
|__/<themeName>
|__/layout
|__/skin
| |__/<skinName>
| |__/css
| |__/images
| | |--image.jpg
| |__/locale
| |__/<localeCode>
| |--translate.csv
|
|__/<Namespace_Module>
|--layout.xml
|--sample_template.phtml
|
Skin File Duplication Option
This option, if enabled, creates automatically a copy of static files which is not locale dependant to all other locale store View. For example, you have a file logo.png for the locale en_US, the file be copied automatically to the fr_FR locale folder of the / pub / skin / <area> / <package> / <theme> / default / locale folder.
To enabled it, you have to edit the file app / code / <code_pool> / <Namespace> / <Module> / etc / config.xml and provide this xml code:
<default>
<design>
<theme>
<allow_skin_files_duplication>1</allow_skin_files_duplication>
</theme>
</design>
</default>
Conclusion
Here were some few examples of the new features and way how will go our preferred open source commerce. And it will stay like that, Open Source, even if Magento has been bought by eBay. I don't know yet what will be exactly the next steps but I make a new article about the framework and his new behaviour and coding practises. If your impatient, well, you can still visit the links below to show you more information and detailed explanation of what we see here.
Magento 2 links (some are working in progress):
