Complete Guide On Magento 2 Development Best Practices

Complete Guide On Magento 2 Development Best Practices

Magento is among the top ecommerce platforms in the world. Due to its flexibility, consistency, and open-source nature, Magento is used by the majority of the big brands for their e-business. Because of Magento’s extensive range of inbuilt functionalities, high scalability, and nonstop growth in development, several leading online businesses and even small retail businesses are migrating from other ecommerce platforms to Magento.

After the launch of Magento 2 in 2015, it is now considered to be leading all other ecommerce platforms with its great functionalities. With such main upgrades, it needs particular technical and more innovative development expertise for any modifications on the platform.

Having years of experience in magneto development, the following are the strategies for best practice on Magento development for any inexperienced and experienced Magento ecommerce developers. These tips include basic Magento Development Practices which will prove helpful for an advanced module development for Magento 2 and also for Magento 1.

Coding Standards

Follow coding standards all the time and don’t edit core files as it can disrupt default Magento behavior and lead to vulnerabilities. The developers generally lose focus on sticking to standards because your project or task needs quick improvement. Results can be achieved fast but your work will lack quality and progress will be stalling in a short time.

If you adhere to the standard conventions, then you can give your code a professional look and making it easier to read at the same time. Your Magento coding standards need to be based on Zend coding standards, PSR1, PSR2, and PSR4.

Module Development

Magento comprises of the core code and optional components that improve or substitute the core code. There are more than 100 out-of-the-box components in the form of modules, themes, and language packages accessible for Magento 2. Enhancements are allowed by Magento’s architecture so that you can develop your own components.

Before creating a new module, ensure that you actually need one. Rather than making a new module from scratch, you can get the default code and override it to fulfill your needs saving you plenty of time and trouble. Also when overriding core for a rewrite, make sure to rewrite only the required code and the new class extends the original main class for following other codes.

During making any module you need to ensure that correct naming conventions are being followed and case. Consistency needs to be maintained while specifying conventions for files, folders, methods, and classes.

Magento 2 needs several additional coding but it depends on simple and clear concepts, therefore if it is very difficult then perhaps it is not the correct method to do it. Go through the Magento source code if you have no idea how to do it. Magento code generally serves as a source of inspiration when you are working towards something new.

Know The Magento 2 Framework

There have been substantial alterations from Magento 1. Ensure to study the abilities and standards of the Magento 2 Framework.

Rather than developing custom validators from scratch, implement the MagentoFrameworkValidatorValidatorInterface.

Instantiating a database connection can be costly and pointless. To perform SQL commands, Magento offers resource models.

Think about using Magento framework conventions rather than low-level or PHP functionality.

Instead of directly querying the database, use the MagentoFrameworkDataCollection class to recover a group of filtered objects.

Take precaution while using third party modules as the developers might not have correctly comprehended Magento standards, therefore take some time to explore their code and ensure they are suitable before using it in production.

Make sure to use git to version your code, an automated deployment tool like Capistrano and a local virtual machine can be used for development.

Write And Utilize Re-Usable Code

Stay away from the usage of unnecessary or duplicate code, which can be difficult to preserve.  Develop a single class or method and reference it when required, rather than copy and paste of same code. You should generally reuse code as much as possible. Write a small and focused code providing a generic solution, which will enable you to re-use these pieces again in future development.

Avoid Creating Helper Classes

Helper or utility classes are classes full of stationary means that do not suit anywhere else. These classes are deemed to be an anti-pattern and contrary to the values of object-oriented programming. If you have ClassA and a ClassA Helper with static functionalities that work on ClassA, you have to consider refactoring those functions into ClassA.

A helper class that works as a catch-all for haphazard ways disrupts the single responsibility principle as it is an effort to resolve numerous troubles in a single class. You need to rewrite your code and shift those functions into the suitable classes they should only work on.

Observer Overriding

Observers can alter the activities of a Magento application as they are inserted into the execution flow dynamically. Inadequately planned and coded observers can result in problems, instabilities, or can even break the application. Follow some guidelines to decrease troubles when your observer is executed. Try to keep your observer efficient, drop business logic, declare observer in the suitable scope, prevent cyclical event loops, and never depend on invocation order.

Layout XML

The layout definition of Magento 2 has been updated to the latest one to regulate the modifications you can do in template files which were possible in the earlier version.

Clear Cache

Numerous development issues can arise if you forget to clear or disable caching. Visual spot checks on rendered content are not reliable when the content that is presented is retrieved from the cache. Clear your cache before doing visual checks for your theme to ensure the content that is presented is correct.