Js and Css For Static Block - MAGENTO EXTENSION

Static blocks are very useful tools in Magento. We can effectively use them in different situations. They provide us enough power on content management. However I felt it lacks with something. It can show its content only in boring text format. If we are planning to use multiple static blocks in a page, then we will definitely seek for adding css and js for static block contents. However if we are planning to do it in the most effective way, we can't achieve this functionality in one step. For this small (some time big) headache, I decided to make an end. It results in a tiny magento extension Rkt_JsCssforSb.

What it does

This extension functionality is simple. For every static block, you can see a section for put javascript and css. You need to put css and js in those text areas. Rest will do by the extension. You don't need to put script and style html tag enclosures inside text area. This job will effectively carry out by extension. Css that added for static blocks will get append to head section and scripts will go to bottom section in body part.

In deep

Static block are least considered section in magento code wise !. I am telling this because, during the development of this extension, I have found out that, there are no static block specific events available. However cms pages has lot of events available. Also model of static block is somewhat "weak" when compare with other entity models! For example, there is no event prefix available for static blocks. This made me in serious trouble and as a result, I have done a model rewrite during the development of the extension. I know its bad. But I forced to do it. Along with this, I am observing to three events in order to make the work done.

But I personally believe this extension is highly useful. Since it makes static block somewhat "dynamic". We can set css and make static block content look nice and by applying some js , we can make those contents dynamic etc.

I am waiting for your feedbacks about this extension. Currently the extension is available on GITHUB and soon it will available in Magento connect. Hope you will use it.

Useful Links

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17832914/how-do-i-extend-cms-block-on-save-event-of-magento
• http://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/32324/how-to-check-whether-a-block-exist-based-on-its-type

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Set Page Size For A Particular Category Programmatically

Here in this tutorial, I would like to share you how can we set page size for a particular category.

The Page Size is actually a property of a toolbar block that present in prodouct list block. So basically what you need to do is to set page size to a particuar value for toolbar block, when your category get loaded.

For this you can use an observer method. In order to implement it, you need to know the id of category. Here I am taking my reference id as 23. Also for this let us set up a custom module, Programmerrkt_PageSizeSetter.

Code Begins

So first let us activate our module

Location : app/etc/modules/Programmerrkt_PageSizeSetter.xml

 
     
      
             true
             local
         
     
 

Next, Let us configure our module,

Location: app/code/local/Programmerrkt/PageSizeSetter/etc/config.xml

  
     
      
          1.0.0
      
     
     
         
             
                 
                     
                         singleton
                         programmerrkt_pagesizesetter/observer
                         setPageSizeForCategory
                     
                 
             
         
     
     
         
             
                 Programmerrkt_PageSizeSetter_Model
             
         
     
 

As you can see, through our module, we are planning to observe an event controller_action_layout_generate_blocks_after. If we need to change some block properties, then this event would be the perfect and coolest event to listen to. Also you can see we are planning to define a custom method setPageSizeForCategory in our observer. At last, we defined model section for our module inside global node. This is because observer is going to define in our model.

So it is the time to define our observer. So let us do that

Location: app/code/local/Programmerrkt/PageSizeSetter/Model/Observer.php

getAction();
   $fullActionName = $controller->getFullActionName();
   $id = (int)$controller->getRequest()->getParam('id');

         //check whether current page is correspond to our special category. If not, returns
   if($fullActionName == "catalog_category_view" && $id == $this->_categoryId)
   {
    //check whether toolbar block exist or not
    $toolbar =  $controller->getLayout()->getBlock('product_list_toolbar');
    if($toolbar)
    {
     //sets page size to corresponding list mode
     $listMode = $toolbar->getCurrentMode();
           $toolbar = $toolbar->addPagerLimit($listMode , $this->_pageSize);
    }
    
   }

   return;
  }
 }
 

So here in setPageSizeForCategory method, we ensures that we are standing in particular category page. If it is not, the control returns. If the page is the category that we are talking about, we will set page size to the toolbar block of that category.

The method that we use here to set page size is addPagerLimit. It has 3 parameters to pass. First one is list mode. It will be either grid/list. We are passing the current mode of toolbar block to this method, so that we dont need to really worry on list mode confusion. Next parameter is the size of page. Last one is label. Here we dont want to pass any labels. Hence not using it.

You can also see that our observer class has two properties $_categoryId and $_pageSize. First one holds the id of our special category and second one holds page size values. So you need to set these two properties according to your need. This will allow us setPageSizeForCategory untouched.

Drawback

:- There is a small drawback for this approach. The event we are observing here will trigger in every page load. Since the scope our module is limitted to a particular category, most of the time our module will return without doing anythong. I feel it as awkward and that's why I mentioned it here. But common !!! this is also a solution. Isn't it?

Output

If anyone solve this issue in better way, let me know and please share it. :)

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Add `Read More` Functionality in CMS Pages

Some times, it would be great if we can add a collapse/expand functionality in CMS Pages in Magento. A perfect example would be a read more option. When we display very long documents through CMS pages, it would be nice if we shrink the content part to a small section and add a read more link bottom of it. When user clicks on that link, the content will be expanded.

We can achieve this functionality by implementing a custom extension. I will show you the steps that we need to take to achieve this. So our extension should have a name Programmerrkt_AdvancedCms.

First step is activating our module. For this add this file in etc/modules

Location : app/etc/modules/Programmerrkt_AdvancedCms.xml

Next step is to define configuration of our module. Let us do that.

Location : app/code/local/Programmerrkt/AdvancedCms/etc/config.xml

This file tells to Magento that our module has a layout file for frontend section. That's it. Our layout file is the heart of our module. It is going to hold the important parts of our module. Let us define our layout file.

Location : app/design/frontend/<.your_package>/<.your_theme>/layout/programmerrkt_advancedcms.xml

So here we defined layout for cms_page handler. Magento will look for this layout handler whenever a request for CMS page is made. So this handler would be a perfect handler for us. Next we added jquery and readmore.js in header section. Then at last we defined a template file script.phtml for holding our custom javascript code. Note that we included this template at the bottom of page.This is achieved by using the block before_body_end. This will ensure that, our custom code will invoked perfectly.

Now our script.phtml should look like this.

Location : app/design/frontend/<.yourpackag>/<.your_theme>/template/programmerrkt/advancedcms/readmore/script.phtml

As you can see readmore() method is called on an element with an id readomore-demo. So it is required that, you need to enclose all the content your cms page inside this id. Demo is shown here.

We are done. Our output will look like this.

So only thing you need to change is edit script.phtml file according to your needs.

Note: Remember you need to add jquery for proper working of this module. If you have jquery installed, then remove the code that add jquery in layout file. Also you need to download readmore.js and has to include it in skin/frontend/<.your_package/<.your_theme>/js/customjs/readmore.js. Similarly add css file in skin/frontend/<.your_package/<.your_theme>/css/customcss/readmore.css. You can use this css file to decorate links appear in your cms page.

Additional Note: readmore.js requires jquery greater than 1.7.0

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Add Layout To Another Layout

The main reason, in fact the inspiration behind this blog is this THREAD. In this thread, the user want to add layout that render by controller B by using controller A along with its layouts. For those who didn't understand the thread, I will explain the situation little bit.

So I have a module Programmerrkt_Checkout, which is used to provide two checkout views for my site. So in my module there are two controllers. Let us call them as Controller A and Controller B. Whenever url request these two controllers, it will show its own layouts in frontend. Let us create our module. Our config file should look like this

config.xml

Location:app/code/local/Programmerrkt/Checkout/etc/config.xml

As you can see, our config file do mainly 2 things here

• Controller Rewrite
• Layout updation

Controller Rewrite :-

It rewrites Mage_Checkout's CartController. This is because Our module is intended to provide two views for checkout/cart

Layout Updation :-

We defined our layout xml file here. It is using to hold the layouts of our controllers.

programmerrkt_checkout.xml

Location:app/code/design/frontend/base/default/layout/programmerrkt_checkout.xml

Here checkout_a_index is the layout handler for controller A. Similarly checkout_b_index is the layout handler for controller B. When www.yoursite.com/index.php/checkout/a loads it will loads content inside in checkout_a_index handler. When www.yoursite.com/index.php/checkout/b loads, it will load content that reside under checkout_b_index handler.

Now how these handlers are loading for A and B view. This is achieved through controllers. Let us look code inside our controllers

Controller B

Location:app/code/local/Programmerrkt/Checkout/controllers/BController.php

This is our controller B. As you can see it call load and render layouts. This will render content comes inside in checkout_b_index handler in its content section. (There are other layout handlers that are loading while do this. An example is default handler).

Controller A

Location:app/code/local/Programmerrkt/Checkout/controllers/AController.php

As I already stated it will render blocks that comes under checkout_a_index handler.

View

From the layout files, you can see that we are setting two templates to set view for A and B. Let me show the content in this file

a.phtml

Location:app/design/frontend/base/default/template/programmerrkt/checkout/a.phtml

b.phtml

Location:app/design/frontend/base/default/template/programmerrkt/checkout/b.phtml

Now load the url www.yourdomain.com/index.php/checkout/a, you will see following output

I am Controller A

I am content of A controller and I lies is layout definition for A controller

Similarly load the url www.yourdomain.com/index.php/checkout/b, you will see following output

I am Controller B

I am content of B controller and I lies is layout definition for B controller

The Real Problem

Now everything is perfect. Here the problem begins. Now we want to load the layout content of controller B, when url request for controller A. ie when www.yourdomain.com/index.php/checkout/a is requested, it should provide following output

I am Controller A

I am content of A controller and I lies is layout definition for A controller

I am Controller B

I am content of B controller and I lies is layout definition for B controller

How can we accomplish that ? Well, in my mind there are two awesome methods that we can depend on. They are

• Use an event Observer to add layout handler of controller B to controller A
• Make changes to codes in Controller A in such a way that it will load layout of controller B also

Using Controller

We can achieve what we want here by changing our controller A code like this

Controller A

Location:app/code/local/Programmerrkt/Checkout/controllers/AController.php

Here what we are done is `manual coding` and replacing of loadLayout() . Why we are doing loading of layout manually? The answer is, if we add $update->addHandle('checkout_b_index') before or after of loadLayout(), it does not make any effect on output. The reason is well explained by alanstorm in this THREAD.
Take a look on loadLayout() definition.

Action.php

Location:app/code/core/Mage/Core/controller/Varien/Action.php

This code reveals the fact that, in your controller we are actually using the same method that is used by default loadLayout() method,except for the addition of of a custom handle before calling loadLayoutUpdates(). (!important).
That's it. We achieved the desired result through controller. Now let us move on to our second approach. That is observer method

Event Observation

This is the most understandable method. Here we are observing for an event `controller_action_layout_load_before`. Add this code to config.xml

Config.xml

Location:app/code/local/Programmerrkt/Checkout/etc/config.xml

Add this code to observer

Observer.php

Location:app/code/local/Programmerrkt/Checkout/Model/Observer.php

when this event is listening, according to my understanding, magento resides in between `$this->addActionLayoutHandles()` and `$this->loadLayoutUpdates()`. That means it already loaded default, store, theme and action handles. So we are in the perfect position. We can add layout handle of controller B, if the current action is `checkout_a_index` (I used `if` condition for check that.). Note: This is a good tutorial that depicts this observer calling LINK
Now go and load url www.yourdomain.com/index.php/checkout/a. You can see the desired output in your page. :)

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