Changing Core data for Magento programmatically - magento

Question

I am currently working on a live website, but the trouble is they would like to switch theme so what I would like to install the new theme and only make it viewable by my ip address.
The trouble is I do not know how to change the Magento theme and skin values programmatically.
Could any of you help me out here?

Answer 1

So this is not a direct answer. Best practices are going to be to back up your database, and system, and restore to a development environment files and database.
Edit the two entries for each store in the core_config_data table to change the url from the live site to the dev site url.
Then develop your new or modified theme on the dev site and deploy the files to the live server when you are ready to push your changes.
There could be an alternative way to do this. You could make a new store in on your Magento install See How to Make Multiple Stores and then copy the theme folder to your development them name directory. And finally configure the new/dev store to use your dev theme.
Both of these are viable options. Trying to trick Magento to serve one theme to your IP and another to everyone else seems like asking for trouble.

Answer 2

This can be done with no modifications to the Magento core.
It involves Chrome and setting your user agent as something custom.
First off, create an exception in Magento - we'll set the matched expression as dev and set the package to new-theme. This will set your package as new-theme if your user-agent matches dev (will serve the theme located in app/design/frontend/new-theme:
Then the second and final step is to open your Developer Toolbar in Chrome and set your user-agent as dev:
Take these 2 easy steps and you can programatically set your theme package only for yourself without affecting others.

Answer 3

You can do it with
Mage::getSingleton('core/design_package')->setTheme('default');
For the implementation just create a block that loads on all pages and add it to the constructor.
XML would be something like that:
<layout version="0.1.0">
<default>
<reference name="content">
<block type="kervin/theme" name="kervin.theme"/>
</reference>
</default>
</layout>
and theme.php, the block would be:
class My_Kervin_Block_Theme extends Mage_Core_Block_Template
{
public function __construct()
{
if ($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"] == 'xxx') {
Mage::getSingleton('core/design_package')->setTheme('default');
}
}
}