Magento add static block to cms page

You can add static block to CMS page in Magento in following 2 ways:

1.) By adding code in Layout Update XML of CMS page:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

<reference name="left">
    <block type="cms/block" name="block_name_anything">
        <action method="setBlockId">
            <block_id>STATIC_BLOCK_ID_HERE</block_id>
        </action>
    </block>
</reference>

2.) By putting below code directly into CMS Page content area:

1

{{block type="cms/block" block_id="STATIC_BLOCK_ID_HERE"}}

Make sure you flush Blocks HTML Output cache if your changes do not reflect on website.

Magento: Zipcode + 4 tax calculation bug fix

Magento bug fix for zipcode + 4 in tax calculation

Tax Calculation in Magento has a bug where customer can escape paying tax if they enter zipcode + 4 digit in USA. This is because you import 5 digit zipcodes with their tax rates in Magento admin, so if customer inputs their zipcode in zipcode+4 format their zipcode will not match with the imported one. Importing 5-digit zipcode ending in wildcard (*) does not solve this issue either.

Before this fix: If zipcode 90036 collects tax, 90036-1234 does NOT collect tax.

You can fix this bug by adding below code in your custom module:

config.xml

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

...
<global>
        <models>
            <tax_resource>
                <rewrite>
                        <calculation>Namespace_Module_Model_Tax_Resource_Calculation</calculation>
                </rewrite>
            </tax_resource>
        </models>
</global>
...

Note that we are rewriting core logic of Tax Calculation. Now create folder structure in your custom module: app/code/local/Namespace/Module/Model/Tax/Resource/Calculation.php and copy below code:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19

<?php
class Namespace_Module_Model_Tax_Resource_Calculation extends Mage_Tax_Model_Resource_Calculation
{
    protected function _getRates($request)
    {
        $countryId = $request->getCountryId();
        $regionId = $request->getRegionId();
        $postcode = $request->getPostcode();

        //12 = california, 25 = iowa
        if($countryId == 'US' && in_array($regionId,array(12,25))) {
                $postcode = substr(trim($request->getPostcode()),0,5);
                $request->setPostcode($postcode);
        }
        return parent::_getRates($request);

    }

}

Above code will only take first 5 digits from the zipcode if the country is USA and state selected is either California or Iowa. You can change the states as per your requirement, to know what ID relates to different states you can look at the State/Province dropdown source code in checkout page.

Magento bug – Checkout cart 500 error – Redirect loops

Magento checkout cart gives 500 error and redirect loops when there is a shopping cart rule with Category condition.

I found a bug in Magento which redirects shopping cart indefinitely causing it 500 internal server error. This can be a serious bug as customer will not able to shop if this happens. I noticed this happens when there is a shopping cart rule which have Category in conditions of the rule.

If total quantity equals or greater than 1 for a subselection of items in cart matching ALL of these conditions:
Category is 125

So for example you have a shopping cart rule where you want to give some discount or free product if at least one product is chosen from specific Category, this triggers the error in frontend shopping cart. Main reason here is Category condition. If you remove category condition then the error should go away. But if you want to keep the category condition and still want Magento to handle the shopping cart promotion rule, check the code changes below:

To solve this I copied below file to my local
app/code/core/Mage/SalesRule/Model/Rule/Condition/Product/Combine.php

and edited the function validate:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

/**
     * Validate a condition with the checking of the child value
     * @param Varien_Object $object
     *
     * @return bool
     */
    public function validate(Varien_Object $object)
    {
        /** @var Mage_Catalog_Model_Product $product */
        $product = $object->getProduct();
        if (!($product instanceof Mage_Catalog_Model_Product)) {
            $product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->load($object->getProductId());
        }

        $valid = parent::validate($object);

        /* Kalpesh commented whole block, as it causes redirect loop and Segmentation fault in apache
        if (!$valid && $product->getTypeId() == Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Type_Configurable::TYPE_CODE) {
            $children = $object->getChildren();
            //$valid = $children && $this->validate($children[0]); //Kalpesh commented, issue....
        }*/


        return $valid;
    }

Hope this helps to some troubled souls!

Magento EE 1.14 – Broken category & product sitemap URLs

Magento EE 1.14 introduces a bug fix which apparently becomes a bug in our website. Magento EE 1.14.0.0 Release Notes and Magento CE 1.9.0.0 Release Notes lists this in it’s Bug Fixes:
Google Sitemap files now include the .html suffix for category and product URLs.

We don’t have .html suffix in our category and product URLs, so we were good before this fix. But after upgrading it to latest version all the category and product URLs were having “.” (dot) at the end in XML sitemap. This is because Magento allows admin to give a custom suffix for category and product URLs for sitemap, but hardcodes “.” regardless of there are values in the above config fields or not. This allows unnecessary dots in all the URLs which can lead to 404 pages.

Magento team have used observer to observe the events sitemap_categories_generating_before and sitemap_products_generating_before to add the suffix in the following file and functions (Notice I have commented all lines in the functions):
app/code/core/Enterprise/Catalog/Model/Observer.php
(copy this file to app/code/local/Enterprise/Catalog/Model/Observer.php, you may have to create directories)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25

/**
     * Add Seo suffix to category's URL if doesn't exists.
     *
     * @param Varien_Event_Observer $observer
     */
    public function addSeoSuffixToCategoryUrl(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
    {
        /*$seoSuffix = (string) Mage::app()->getStore()->getConfig(
            Mage_Catalog_Helper_Category::XML_PATH_CATEGORY_URL_SUFFIX
        );
        $this->_addSuffixToUrl($observer->getCollection()->getItems(), $seoSuffix);*/
    }

    /**
     * Add Seo suffix to product's URL if doesn't exists.
     *
     * @param Varien_Event_Observer $observer
     */
    public function addSeoSuffixToProductUrl(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
    {
        /*$seoSuffix = (string) Mage::app()->getStore()->getConfig(
            Mage_Catalog_Helper_Product::XML_PATH_PRODUCT_URL_SUFFIX
        );
        $this->_addSuffixToUrl($observer->getCollection()->getItems(), $seoSuffix);*/
    }

After commenting above function’s logic and generating the Google Sitemap again (Admin > Catalog > Google Sitemap) everything was normal (no dot and suffix in URLs)

Magento: Change canonical URL for particular category only

In Magento, if you want to change canonical URL for just one category or quite a few categories, and don’t want to affect rest of the canonical URLs then do the following.

Note that this is helpful when you already have canonical URL in the page and want to REPLACE it with new url. If you don’t have canonical URL at all then you might want to ignore the first action tag in the below code.

– Go to the category page you want to change canonical URL in Magento Admin
– Click the tab “Custom Design”
– In the Custom Layout Update textbox, paste this:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

<reference name="head">
    <action method="removeItem" block="head">
        <item>link_rel</item>
        <name>http://loca.lho.st/old-canonical-url</name>
    </action>
    <action method="addLinkRel" translate="title">
        <rel>canonical</rel>
        <href>http://loca.lho.st/new-canonical-url</href>
    </action>
</reference>

Change http://loca.lho.st/old-canonical-url and http://loca.lho.st/new-canonical-url with your desired URLs and save the category.

Basically first action tag in the code removes old canonical URL and second action tag adds the canonical URL with the new value you specify.

You may also need to clear cache.

HTH!