Magento Observer Destination - magento

Question

I have wrote 2 Magento observers and they both do exactly what I want with the exception that they end on the wrong page. In other words, they write the log files, modify the databases, and talk with other servers, but they modify the page to page routing. For example, I have an observer that I used at login that modifies a database, writes a cookie, and writes to a log, but it changes the post log-in page to
http://www.my-web-site.com/index.php/customer/login/post/
and then gives me a 404 error. If I hit "Ctrl" + 'r' then I am logged in at
http://www.my-web-site.com/index.php/customer/account/index/
which is correct. If I change, app/code/local/my_module/my_model/etc/config.xml to
app/code/local/my_module/my_model/etc/config.xml.1 (in other words take out the observer), then Magento routes to the correct page,
I'm thinking that I need router information in config.xml. My current config.xml is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- The root node for Magento module configuration -->
<config>
<!-- The module's node contains basic information about each Magento module -->
<modules>
<!-- This must exactly match the namespace and module's folder
names, with directory separators replaced by underscores -->
<MyCompany_LogIn>
<!-- The version of our module, starting at 0.0.0 -->
<version>0.0.0</version>
</MyCompany_LogIn>
</modules>
<!-- Configure our module's behavior in the global scope -->
<global>
<!-- Defining models -->
<models>
<!-- Unique identifier in the model's node.
By convention, we put the module's name in lowercase. -->
<mycompany_login>
<!-- The path to our models directory,
with directory separators replaced by underscores -->
<class>MyCompany_LogIn_Model</class>
</mycompany_login>
</models>
</global>
<frontend>
<!-- Defining an event observer -->
<events>
<!-- The code of the event we want to observe -->
<customer_login>
<!-- Defining an observer for this event -->
<observers>
<!-- Unique identifier within the catalog_product_save_after node.
By convention, we write the module's name in lowercase. -->
<mycompany_login>
<!-- The model to be instantiated -->
<class>mycompany_login/observer</class>
<!-- The method of the class to be called -->
<method>wrtLogInCookie</method>
<!-- The type of class to instantiate -->
<type>singleton</type>
</mycompany_login>
</observers>
</customer_login>
</events>
</frontend>
</config>
I'm guessing that the login inside Magento uses an observer, and I'm interfering with it.
Besides the , I'm guessing that I could also accomplish a similar thing in the PHP Observer code. My observer is:
<?php
/**
* Our class name should follow the directory structure of
* our Observer.php model, starting from the namespace,
* replacing directory separators with underscores.
* i.e. /www/app/code/local/MyCompany/LogIn/Model/Observer.php
*/
class MyCompany_LogIn_Model_Observer extends Varien_Event_Observer
{
/**
* Magento passes a Varien_Event_Observer object as
* the first parameter of dispatched events.
*/
public function wrtLogInCookie(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
{
// Retrieve the product being updated from the event observer
$customer = $observer->getEvent()->getCustomer();
$email = $customer->getEmail();
Mage::log('The E-mail is: ' . $email);
$ran_nmbr = rand();
Mage::log('The random number is: ' . $ran_nmbr);
$crnt_dat = date("m-d-Y::H:i:s");
Mage::log('The date is: ' . $crnt_dat);
return $this;
}
}
?>
I have read about routers, but the articles discussed it in terms of landing on some page before the extension is executed. As you can see, I need to land on the right page after the extension is executed.
Inside the PHP observer, I also tried redirects. For example,
Mage::app()->getResponse()->setRedirect(Mage::getUrl('customer/account/login'));
Maybe I need a full URL address or something. I'm sure this is easy to fix, but my ignorance seems to be following me around. Please help if you know something about this.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as an easy fix. You see, if we look at app/code/core/Mage/Customer/controllers/AccountController.php, in the loginPostAction(), we see that the customer/session singleton triggers the customer_login call. However, what is causing the trip-up here is that after that is called, back in the controller, the controller calls $this->_loginPostRedirect(), so all of your rerouting work that you did is overwritten.
How to fix:
After saying it isn't all that simple, I did happen to see a cheat that we can take advantage of:
$session = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session');
$session->setBeforeAuthUrl($forwardToUrl);

Answer 2

You're partially right. The problem you're running into is Magento's redirect mechanism works with a "last one to say something" wins philosophy. If you look at the standard login code in
app/code/core/Mage/Customer/controllers/AccountController.php
You'll see the loginPostAction method ends with a call to
$this->_loginPostRedirect();
which (ultimately) ends up calling some code that looks like this
$this->getResponse()->setRedirect($url);
This may be the code that's causing you a problem, or it may be something else. The general problem is the final call to the response object's setRedirect method will win.
My usual solution to this is setting some sort of global flag (static variable on a class, a flag set with Mage::register) when I want to perform a redirect, and then creating an additional observer for controller_action_postdispatch. In this observer I look for the global flag I set, and if I find it, set the redirect there.
This handled 99% of redirect situations, and should handle yours. The times this won't work are with some admin login cases, as well as URL rewrites.
The admin login contains some redirect code that doesn't use Magento response object
#File: app/code/core/Mage/Admin/Model/Session.php
...
header('Location: ' . $requestUri);
exit;
...
If this redirect is causing you a problem, create a listener for admin_session_user_login_success that uses PHP header redirects before Magento's does.
Similarly, if Magento's using a rewrite object, the following code might run
#File: app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Url/Rewrite.php
if ($isPermanent) {
header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
}
header('Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header('Pragma: no-cache');
header('Location: ' . $url);
exit;
(that said, the rewrite code will rarely be your problem, as in standard Magento operation is runs before controller dispatch)