Customising Magento controllers

How to customize a Magento controller. This follows from another note about creating a simple Magento module.

Code structure

We start by copying the core ‘AccountController.php’ file to our already existing module. To keep things simpler will we reuse the module we created in the previous post as both relate to the customer. We then start with the following structure:

.
`-- app
    |-- code
    |   `-- local
    |       `-- Seconddrawer
    |           `-- SDCustomer
    |               `-- etc
    |                   `-- config.xml
    |               `-- controllers
    |                   `-- AccountController.php
    `-- etc
        `-- modules
            `-- Seconddrawer_All.xml

Modifying the controller

Magento is written for PHP5 and uses nice OO principles which make this kind of thing a little easier. What we are going to to is extend the existing core controller and simply change the functions that want. For this example we are just going to add some logging code whenever the welcome email is sent. This is performed in the account controller's _welcomeCustomer function.

Firstly, strip out all functions except the _welcomeCustomer function and make it look like this:

<?php

require_once 'Mage/Customer/controllers/AccountController.php';

class Seconddrawer_SDCustomer_AccountController extends Mage_Customer_AccountController
{
  public function preDispatch()
  {
    parent::preDispatch();
    $this->getRequest()->setRouteName('customer');
  }


  protected function _welcomeCustomer(Mage_Customer_Model_Customer $customer, $isJustConfirmed = false)
  {
    $this->_getSession()->addSuccess($this->__('Thank you for registering with %s', Mage::app()->getStore()->getName()));

    /* don't send any email
    $customer->sendNewAccountEmail($isJustConfirmed ? 'confirmed' : 'registered');
    */

    /* but log it */
    error_log('Email was NOT sent');

    $successUrl = Mage::getUrl('*/*/index', array('_secure'=>true));
    if ($this->_getSession()->getBeforeAuthUrl()) {
      $successUrl = $this->_getSession()->getBeforeAuthUrl(true);
    }
    return $successUrl;
  }
}

Note that our class name follows the same naming scheme as our module and that it extends the Mage controller (not the class the the core controller itself extends. To be sure, we place a ‘require_once’ at the top of the file to make sure the the core class is there to be included, it will only do this if necessary.

We have then simply commented out the line that sends the email and inserted one that does some logging. There is no need to close the PHP tag as it is not required by PHP or Magento’s style and it reduces the troubles that can occur by whitespace being sent before headers.

It is important to note the preDispatch method also. It calls the extend class to do some setup but then sets our routing through ‘customer’ which is really the core’s customer. If we were to define all our own customer views and layouts then we would not need this but for this example we are only modifying the functionality of the controller so we want all rendering untouched.

So now we have our modified controller, we just need to tell Magento to start using it.

Get Magento to use our new controller

Like any module, the configuration lives in the config.xml file. We have already modified this file in the previous post but now we need to add the routing to tell Magento to direct calls to our own controller.

We adjust our module’s config file to looke like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
  <modules>
    <Seconddrawer_SDCustomer>
      <version>0.2.0</version>
    </Seconddrawer_SDCustomer>
  </modules>

  <global>
    <fieldsets>
      <customer_account>

      <!-- snip -->

      </customer_account>
    </fieldsets>

    <routers>
      <customer>
        <rewrite>
          <account>
            <to>Seconddrawer_SDCustomer/account</to>
            <override_actions>true</override_actions>
          </account>
        </rewrite>
      </customer>
    </routers>
  </global>

  <frontend>
    <routers>
      <sdcustomer>
        <use>standard</use>
        <args>
          <module>Seconddrawer_SDCustomer</module>
          <frontName>sdcustomer</frontName>
        </args>
      </sdustomer>
    </routers>
  </frontend>

</config>

The code from the previous post has been removed for clarity. What you will notice is that we have added a section under ‘routers’ both for ‘global’ and ‘frontend’. The naming scheme, again, must match the module folder structure. Here we have told Magento that requests to ‘customer/account’ will be rewritten to the new controller which will override some actions. The frontend section also allows us to modify view for this controller. It is included here for completeness but with the preDispatch function we defined in the controller all frontend rendering will still go through the core defined process.

If we still have our module activated in app/etc/modules/Seconddrawer_All.xml then our modified controller should start being used immediately, as seen in your logs.

The files used are as follows:

.
`-- app
    |-- code
    |   `-- local
    |       `-- Seconddrawer
    |           `-- SDCustomer
    |               |-- etc
    |               |   `-- config.xml
    |               `-- controllers
    |                   `-- AccountController.php
    `-- etc
        `-- modules
            `-- Seconddrawer_All.xml

Conclusion

Magento is a beast, a powerful but not very well documented one. Hopefully this simple example shows how the Magento core code can be modified and activated without too much fuss. Just a little more documentation thrown in to the cloud.