Magento: Difference between order states and statuses

If you are building website in Magento, you may have noticed that there are two columns in sales_flat_order table which are confusing. These are state and status. You might think what is the difference between these two, both having same meaning.

Well, this is not the case. They both are different. State is used by magento to tell if the order is new, processing, complete, holded, closed, canceled, etc.; while Statuses are the one that YOU would be defining at the backend in System -> Order Statuses. Magento displays order STATUSES and not STATES in the backend order detail page to let you know which status is assigned as per your mapping. Remember, multiple statuses can be mapped with one state, while vice versa is not possible. Continue reading »

Magento: Difference between source_model, frontend_model, backend_model

When dealing with Magento Admin’s system configuration, you may have encountered with these models. If you don’t know, these models are used when you add custom fields through your system.xml file at Magento’s backend configuration (Admin -> System -> Configuration).

Okay, so the difference between these 3 models are:

source_model:
It specifies a Model class, where you will be returned with options that can populate in the current field.

Example,

<source_model>adminhtml/system_config_source_yesno</source_model>

this will populate select dropdown with values Yes/No

frontend_model:
It specifies a Block class to add custom render to use as a frontend field type instead of/along with default frontend_type field value (text, textarea, select, etc.).

Example, Continue reading »