what magento frontend events can should I observe if I want the chance to inject blocks to the ("head" block) ?
and while in the observer's code, how do I check if the current layout has some handle (e.g. not_logged_in) set.
Give the
controller_action_layout_generate_blocks_after
event a try. The Layout object and its child blocks should be instantiated by the point that event fires.
There's only ever one Layout object, and you can grab the handles in play with
// get the layout->get the updates manager->get the handles
$handles = Mage::getSingleton('core/layout')->getUpdate()->getHandles();
var_dump($handles);
If you're working on front-end code and trying to stick to magento conventions, it's probably better to add a layout.xml file to your module, and use the layout file to add your blocks. It's less fun than figuring out something new though!
I appreciate the plug on the blog, but clockworkgeek is correct. The best way to accomplish this is to use a layout file to add the blocks you need. It is also possible for those blocks to change their own rendering behavior based on arbitrary code.
If there is a reason why you cannot use layouts, please elaborate a bit in your question and we'll be happy to help.
Related
I have a joomla site and would like to integrate some old unfinished webcomics to it, so I can pick them up where I stopped in a CMS that won't leave me in an absolute frothing rage (thanks, wordpress).
I've got some experience with Joomla and I believe it would be a pretty good platform for managing multiple comics... except for the small issue of horrid navigation between pages/articles. Joomla's integrated article navigation is a humble but passable start, but if you intend to use categories to organize chapters then getting from the end of one to the beginning of the next is... yeah. This is a pity, as Joomla's category and article management options are beautiful for archiving and presentation, and adding gantry 5 to it means a great deal of control over the reading experience. Basically, joomla has pretty much everything I want, except for the navigation.
Ideally, what I'd like to be able to accomplish for comic navigation in joomla is:
Clickable full-article-image leading to next article/page
Prev/next article buttons (already available)
Prev/next category buttons (do we have those?)
The latter two in a module I can choose where to publish (optional)
And this is it, basically. I understand that implementing the first could be very hard without some major template customization, in which case I'd be willing to insert the image as a link in the article body... but only if there was one single code I could use, like the one that generates the next category article button. Because I'm not willing to create hundreds of menu items to generate links page-by-page.
So is any of this doable?
This is a quick answer but too much for a comment. I'm assuming since you are on SO that you don't mind coding (as opposed to just configuring).
I think you need to do two things. First you need to create a pagination.php for your template. This will let you really super control what the pagination looks like. You can have images, special css and js, whatever you want. You can also add the "last" and "first" options.
I think you need to make a new plugin to replace the core pagenavigation plugin and that also generates the previous/next category links. (Or I guess you could make one just to do categorynavigation depending on what you want.) HOWEVER, it seems to me that there is data on the sibling links that is already being generated in the content category model so you might be able to use that. (Check the code; I think there was never a UI for it, but it is there. Even if it isn't there, siblings are very easy to obtain in nested sets)
The other thing you can really think about if you go that route is changing the whole thing somewhat to use a module that gets the current ID and category ID from JInput. You might also be able to use JPagination. The important thing, however is that you make sure to do the caching the way the pagination that is there does it. In other words you really want to cache the whole list in the order you want so you are not running so many queries and slowing your site down. You may want to look at the categories and category modules to get some ideas about the queries to do.
Hope that gets you started, but it is definitely something you can do without too much trouble.
Twofold question.
Using a web template that utilizes AJAX for loading new pages, rather than traditional point-the-browser-to-the-url style, how would one go about adding new script or style tags to the page head as necessary?
I think using jQuery $('head').append(script); works just fine, but (and here's the second half), if I wanted to group all of the scripts that were page-dependent away from those that are universal across the site - how would I do that?
Using a div sounds so enticing since I could print it at the initial page render and just call
$('head div.external').append(script), but still probably a bad idea inside the head.
Is there any other element or method I could use to group these? The goal being to easily remove all of them when the user navigates away from the current page. A smaller consideration is that Google Analytic instructs you to place it at the end of the head tag (I'll be honest, I don't know why being the last script matters), and I don't want my scripts to interfere. Do these even need to be in the head, could I place a div at the end of the body and use that?
Surely the easiest way to do this, if it is necessary, is with classes:
$(script).addClass('external').appendTo('head');
then later:
$('script.external').remove();
I'm honestly not sure what this would achieve, however.
Having no luck here trying to find a solution to this.
I've set up a looping selector based on this guide. (I also used the ListLoopingDataSource class in Part 2 in order to have strings in my looping list).
What I want to be able to do is then change another element (an image box/placeholder) on my layout, based on what is currently selected in the looping selector.
No real idea how to do this, the onSelectionChanged event is kind of abstracted and not really useful? I'm not sure how to programmatically change images either, it doesn't look like I can access a resource from the code base, only from the xaml.
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I found that I could do this by using binding.
I have an idea of what view helpers do (/view/helpers), but I have no idea what a view filter (/view/filters) is, or what its used for, can some one please shed some light on the matter?
Thank You =)
At the end of rendering a view, Zend_View passes the output to any filter(s) you have registered, by calling the filter() method on the filter object.
One use of a filter could be to minify HTML output, stripping comments and whitespace to reduce the size of the content to send over the network.
In theory, you could write more sophisticated filters, that modify the DOM, altering, hiding or removing page elements. I wouldn't do that because it's more efficient for the view to render elements right on the first pass, than to tweak them with DOM operations after rendering. Or you could modify content, such as to translate English into French on the fly (if you had an automatic way of doing that, which ZF does not provide).
Zend_View filter is unfortunately undocumented, which makes me think there is little demand for it. I suspect that view filters are basically a victim of YAGNI. They were implemented without a good use case in mind.
I have create a module which at this point does nothing but exist the next step I need to figure out is how to make it does something when someone views the a product at this point I don't care if it says hello world next to the image
can someone help me I can't seem to figure out what I need to extend if i need to use and observer or what I seem to be lost .... or drowning
Depending on what you want to accomplish, you could go in many different directions from here. If you're looking for visual feedback, creating a new block and adding it to the product page might be a good direction. Try creating a new block in your module (Yournamespace_Yourmodule_Block_Product_View in the file app/code/local/Yournamespace/Yourmodule/Block/Product/View.php) and define a method toHtml in that block that echos some HTML (say "hello world"). Look at other blocks in the system to see how to set up such a class (what to descend from, etc). Later on, you'll want to turn this into a proper template, but this approach will help you understand blocks. Check Alan's other tutorials for how to set up your config.xml to define where blocks are found.
Now, inside your theme, in /templates/catalog/product/view.php, create an instance of your block and display it's contents like this:
<?php print $this->getLayout()->createBlock("yourmodule/product_view")->toHtml(); ?>
This should echo some HTML onto the product view page.
I want to emphasize that this skips several of the steps to doing it the "right" way, but it should get you quick visual feedback and help you understand how a page is built inside of magento.