October CMS – Widget OC Media Manager

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If you work with the form elements fileupload or mediafinder in combination with user admin roles ( Settings > Administrators ) you may end up with the following error while saving a model.

In order to fix that, you must review the permissions of your admin user account for Upload and manage media contents – images, videos, sounds, documents. and select Allow or Inherit, depending on how you setup your roles.

October CMS - Admin User Roles Media

After saving the permissions, you should be able to upload or select an image and save the model.

October CMS – How To Fix Broken Thumbnails

October CMS Logo

I recently started setting up a dockerized October CMS environment based on Alpine Linux, MariaDB and PHP-FPM which was actually a very straightforward process. However, for some reason the integrated image resizer didn’t create thumbnails of uploaded images.

October CMS - Broken Thumbnail Image

Unfortunately there was nothing in the log files which could help me to identify the cause of the problem. After checking the file permissions, I decided to trace back the issue and found the reason in file vendor/october/rain/src/Database/Attach/Resizer.php.

The method getMimeType() returned always null, which broke the entire image manipulation process.

After a quick research I found out that getMimeType requires php_fileinfo which I simply forgot to set in my Dockerfile. After adding php7-fileinfo and rebuilding the container, the issue was finally fixed.

 

Notice: Use of undefined constant T_CURLY_OPEN – assumed ‘T_CURLY_OPEN’ in /var/www/src/setup/src/ Magento/Setup/Module/ Di/Code/Reader/FileClassScanner.php on line 72

Today I finally had some time to cleaned up my Dockerfile for Magento 2. I am using Alpine Linux for most of my Magento 2 projects which usually includes NGINX, PHP-FPM and MariaDB.

While testing my updated Dockerfile I came across the following PHP notice which prevented the deployment scripts from finishing the Magento 2 setup.

The problem was simply a missing PHP extension php7.1-tokenizer which has resolved the issue after re-creating the container with –build.

 

PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Interface ‘SessionHandlerInterface’ not found in /var/www/src/vendor/ laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Session/FileSessionHandler.php on line 10

Today I successfully installed my first October CMS project locally via composer / command line. The installation was pretty straightforward and worked surprisingly well on my Alpine Linux docker container which includes NGINXPHP-FPM and MariaDB.

However, when I tried to open the front-end I got the following error.

After a quick research I found the solution on Stackoverflow. I basically forgot to install the PHP extension php7-session inside my docker container. I manually installed the missing extension, but also updated my Dockerfile in case I have to rebuild my container.

After that I manually killed all PHP processes to make sure php-fpm loads the new extension with the next page reload.

 

Invalid value for field resource.machineType in Google Compute Engine

Currently I am working on a light-weight PHP class which should help me to create, list and delete VM instances on Googles Compute Engine. While writing the class, I came across few issue I would like to share with you. In the following example I tried to create a micro instance, because didn’t need much computing power. As you probably know, here is how you can select the machine type via dashboard.

google_cloud_compute_engine_micro_machine

When I tried to create a micro instance via PHP API with the correct Machine Type I received the following error message.

Here is a part of a PHP file I am using for API connection tests.

As you can see, I set a string f1-micro which is obviously not valid. I double-checked the API guides and found this URL.

So I defined the value for the machine type as follows which has fixed the invalid value for field resource.machineType.

 

Font Awesome Icons without CDN in Magento2

How to ... in Magento

I recently worked on a custom module where one of the requirements was to use Font Awesome for custom forms and notifications / alerts.

Most of the people in the Magento community suggest to load Font Awesome via CDN, but this can cause ” blank squares ” and eventually slow down the front-end on slower connections.

So instead using a CDN I decided to add those libraries in Magento which will be merged with the static view files. Here is how it works.

1. Copy files

Go to Host Font Awesome Yourself and download the entire library. The zip file should contain css, js and less files as well as webfonts.

Fontawesome Less Files

Copy all less files to the following folder.

Next, copy all files from the webfonts folder to the below path.

Fontawesome Font Files

Make sure you only copy the less files ( no CSS files ).

2. Update Layout XML

Don’t load the library globally if you only need it at one place. In my case, I added those library to my custom controller only. For example:

3. Template

Once you have re-compiled your code, you should be able to use Front Awesome in your template. For example:

Font Awesome Example

Btw. the same works for the adminhtml area in ./view/adminhtml/.

Working with files and folders in Magento2

Working with files and folders in Magento2

Magento® 2 offers you a bunch methods for file and folder operations, which allow you to implement quality modules in a short time. Especially if you are planning to publish modules on the Magento Marketplace you have to use those functions, otherwise you won’t meet Magento’s coding standards. In order to have access to cool functions like mkdirRecursive, deleteDirectory or changePermissionsRecursively simply inject \Magento\Framework\Filesystem\Driver\File in your constructor.

Once you have re-compiled your code, you should be able to use those functions in your modules like below.

More functions are listed below.

1. Check if the file or folder exists on the file system.

2. Returns information like ctime and mtime or sizeatimeuid and gid.

3. Check if a file is readable

4. Check if path is a file ( not folder )

5. Check if path is a directory ( not a file )

6. Get content of a regular file

7. Check if a regular file is writable ( not a folder )

8. Return the parent directory of a path

9. Create a new directory with specific permissions

10. Create a new directory recursively

11. Reads a directory and returns an array with all paths of its sub-directories

12. Search for a path

13. Rename a regular file or a directory

14. Copy a file from A to B

15. Create a symlink

16. Delete a regular file ( not a file )

17. Delete a directory recursively

18. Change permissions of a directory

19. Change permissions of a directory and file recursively

20. Manipulate the access and modification time of a file

21. Write content to a file

22. Opens a file like fopen

23. Returns a line from the given handle

24. Reads a file like fread.

25. Reads a CSV file like fgetcsv

26. Returns position of a pointer like ftell

27. Seeks to a specific offset like fseek

28. Returns true if pointer is at the end of a file

29. Close a file

30. Write to a file like fwrite

31. Write one row to a CSV file

32. Flush output of a file. See fflush.

33. Lock a file before write content to a file

34. Unlock a file after all file manipulations are done

35. Return a absolute path

36. Fixes a path separator

37. Reads a directory recursively and returns paths as an array

38. Return the real path like realpath

39. Returns a path for link

Cheers

The use of function is_readable() is discouraged in Magento2

How to fix ... in Magento

Today I was working on method which is responsible to read information of an uploaded file. I came across the same problem I had in my previous blog post ( The use of function filectime() / filemtime() is discouraged in Magento2 ).

This time it was able to get rid of the warning quickly, because \Magento\Framework\Filesystem\Driver\File was already injected in my constructor.

I simply replaced is_readable with the below condition.

That’s it. Check my blog post about Working with files and folders in Magento2 for more information.

The use of function filectime() / filemtime() is discouraged in Magento2

How to fix ... in Magento

The problem I had today was located in a helper ( [Namespace]\[Module]\Helper\FileSystem ) which I have created for some basic filesystem operations. The below message was the result of Magento’s EQP which I use before I commit any code.

The warning message basically means, I should find another way to get the creation and modification time of a file because of Magento’s coding standards. I have done that a couple of times already and would like to share my solution this time. First you have to pass \Magento\Framework\Filesystem\Driver\File in your existing constructor or create a new one.

Once you have re-compiled your code, you have access to the file stats as follows.

Beside ctime and mtime the array $fileData should have other file information like size, atime, uid and gid.

UI Components and searchResultToOutput in Magento2

Today I had to fix the following issue in a custom module. The error appeared on the UI Component list view.

I found the reason of the problem in the di.xml file. All what was missing was the following virtualType node. After adding this and re-compiling the code, the list view was fixed.