My Silly Point of View

How to fix the “Illegal scheme supplied, only alphanumeric characters are permitted” Magento error on Localhost using HTTP (fresh install)

Richard Feraro — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:56:01 +0000

I want to setup a development environment for the Mage Enabler for WordPress plugin in my new desktop so I downloaded the latest copy of Magento Community Edition which is version 1.6.1.0 at the time of this writing. I used the sample data provided from the Magento download page and used all the default values.

Everything went well during the installation except when I access the frontend (http://localhost/magento) and admin (http://localhost/magento/admin), I was greeted with the default error page like the one below:

The page itself is not helpful so I decided to check the content of the error log (htdocs\magento\var\report) record number 1742231029 which contains the following information:

a:5:{i:0;s:67:"Illegal scheme supplied, only alphanumeric characters are permitted";i:1;s:681:"#0 C:\xampp\htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\Store.php(712): Zend_Uri::factory('{{base_url}}') #1 C:\xampp\htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Controller\Varien\Front.php(313): Mage_Core_Model_Store->isCurrentlySecure() #2 C:\xampp\htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Controller\Varien\Front.php(161): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Front->_checkBaseUrl(Object(Mage_Core_Controller_Request_Http)) #3 C:\xampp\htdocs\magento\app\code\core\Mage\Core\Model\App.php(349): Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Front->dispatch() #4 C:\xampp\htdocs\magento\app\Mage.php(640): Mage_Core_Model_App->run(Array) #5 C:\xampp\htdocs\magento\index.php(80): Mage::run('', 'store') #6 {main}";s:3:"url";s:19:"/magento/index.php/";s:11:"script_name";s:18:"/magento/index.php";s:4:"skin";s:7:"default";}

As you can see, the cause of the error is the invalid config data format being passed during the start of a session. To fix this, we need to accomplish these tasks:

Allow the admin panel to run on localhost by disabling the domain check.
Fix the config data value.

Allow the admin panel to run on localhost.

You will need to follow the instructions in my previous post but instead of using HTTP, you must access the admin page via HTTPS after you applied the code changes.

Fixing the config data value.

Once you are able to access the admin panel using HTTPS, go to System > Configuration > General > Web. Make sure that you supply the proper value for the Base URL on both Unsecure and Secure tabs then save the changes. See my example below:

Clear your browser’s cache and also Magento’s cache by deleting all the contents (not the folder itself) of the cache directory (htdocs\magento\var\cache). At this point, you should be able to access the frontend and admin panel using HTTP protocol.

Auto-select all

Richard Feraro — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working for the past few days with jQuery and one of the task was to manipulate HTML forms before submitting it for processing. What I needed to do is to process a form having multiple submit buttons and select tags. These set of select tags requires all values to be selected on submit.

Let’s start with creating the markup of the form. Save the HTML below and name it as index.htm (we won’t be needing PHP stuff for now in this exercise.)





Sample Form

The markup above will create a single form with an id of myForm having four (4) multi-select field with the following ids:

do-not-select
color
size
category

At line 6, we added the jQuery file (latest version 1.5.2 as of this writing) to use it’s functionality in manipulating DOM objects. Now for the real action, copy the code below and insert it between line 6 and 7:

The script above will do the following task:

Instruct the browser to execute the script within $(document).ready(...); when the page has loaded.
Trigger the script within $('#myForm').submit(...) once the form with an id of myForm is submitted.
With the given SELECT element ids (color, size, category), find all OPTION tags in each of them and add the attribute and value selected="selected"

We also added at line 10 the event handler onSubmit with return false; to prevent the page on submitting while we are testing the script.

That’s it! Load the file on your browser and click Submit button. It should highlight all the options under color, size and category while ignoring the do-not-select option since we didn’t add them in the affected elements. See the full markup below. Remember to remove the onSubmit="return false;" in the FORM tag to enable redirection of your form on submit.





Sample Form

How to create a new Magento customer account from an external site?

Richard Feraro — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:00:08 +0000

I’ve been receiving a lot of inquiries on how to create a new customer record on the fly using Mage.php or using the plugin Mage Enabler for WordPress. So, to save you time and also to provide a thread for this specific topic, here’s how to accomplish it.

First, include the file Mage.php from your Magento installation to your PHP file. Doing this will enable you to connect to your shop using the Mage object.

If you’re using Mage Enabler for WordPress, you may skip this part:


and here’s the rest of the code…
// Customer Information
$firstname = "John";
$lastname = "Smith";
$email = "johnsmith@localhost.local";
$password = "myverysecretpassword";

// Website and Store details
$websiteId = Mage::app()->getWebsite()->getId();
$store = Mage::app()->getStore();

$customer = Mage::getModel("customer/customer");
$customer->website_id = $websiteId;
$customer->setStore($store);

try {
	// If new, save customer information
	$customer->firstname = $firstname;
	$customer->lastname = $lastname;
	$customer->email = $email;
	$customer->password_hash = md5($password);
	if($customer->save()){
		echo $customer->firstname." ".$customer->lastname." information is saved!";
	}else{
		echo "An error occured while saving customer";
	}
}catch(Exception $e){
	// If customer already exists, initiate login
	if(preg_match('/Customer email already exists/', $e)){
		$customer->loadByEmail($email);

		$session = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session');
		$session->login($email, $password);

		echo $session->isLoggedIn() ? $session->getCustomer()->getName().' is online!' : 'not logged in';
	}
}
The above code tries to create a Magento customer account using the given parameters such as $firstname, $lastname, $email and $password. If the email doesn’t have a match in the database, the request proceeds. But if a match is found, it logs in the customer using the parameters $email and $password then checks if the customer is online or not logged in. There are actually more parameters that you can pass such as if you want to send confirmation message or not but these are the basic fields to help you get started.
I hope this will help you integrate the Magento registration to your external site

Separating message and author in ‘Stray Random Quotes’ WordPress plugin

Richard Feraro — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 20:05:22 +0000

I needed a plugin that can show random quotes with author options as well and I found Stray Random Quotes WordPress plugin could do the trick. The only problem is, the function to display the random quote directly outputs the text onscreen together with the author.

What I need to do is to suppress the display of the function output onscreen, pass it to a variable then do a split of the variable to separate the message and author in an array. See the code below on how I did it

Pretty easy!

My Silly Point of View won Best Technology Blog at 2010 Philippine Blog Awards

Richard Feraro — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 03:08:07 +0000

I was so nervous that night that I decided not to cite this long acceptance speech so I posted it here instead. Here it goes:

Thank you for the recognition and also for allowing me to be a part of the awards night.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Philippine Blogger Awards Inc., who organized the magnificent evening to acknowledge us, anonymous bloggers, of our contribution to the web by way of blogging through our chosen niche;

To the board committees and judges, well-known and are successful in their own fields of expertise, who took their time and participated in the event;

To the sponsors who gave their commitments to make the night happen;

To the untiring volunteers and supporters from the Philippine Blogging Community who helped the organization and also us in their own little ways;

and most of all, to the readers both here and abroad, whether its a single page view or a couple of minutes in our blog, it means a lot to me.

Again, thank you. Blog on!

See complete list of winners here.

My Silly Point of View is nominated for Best Technology Blog!

Richard Feraro — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:04:12 +0000

The event will be held on 12th of December 2010 at Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza. Hopefully, I’ll be able to win the award but nevertheless, the ultimate goal is to be with the best Filipino bloggers in the country.

How to pull the list of customers from Magento to an external site?

Richard Feraro — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:09:16 +0000

If you’re thinking of creating a page that will display your customer list from Magento to a different PHP-based application, you can use the script below to do so.

First, let’s create a file called index.php and inside it, create function (I named it getCustomers()) that will extract an array of customer list and their information. The function should be able to access the Mage.php file of your Magento instance.

getCollection()
				  ->addAttributeToSelect('*');

	$result = array();
	foreach ($collection as $customer) {
		$result[] = $customer->toArray();
	}

	return $result;
}
?>

Once you’re done with the function, add the HTML tags needed to create the a page with a table for the customer information.



Customers





	ID
	Lastname
	Firstname
	Email
	Is Active?
	Date Created
	Date Updated

After line 47, press return/enter key and add the following script to loop through the array result of our getCustomer() function:

 0){
	foreach($result as $key => $value){
		echo "";
			echo "".$value['entity_id']."";
			echo "".$value['lastname']."";
			echo "".$value['firstname']."";
			echo "".$value['email']."";
			echo "";
			echo $value['is_active'] == 1 ? "Yes" : "No";
			echo "";
			echo "".$value['created_at']."";
			echo "".$value['updated_at']."";
		echo "";
	}
}else{
	echo "No records found";
}
?>

There are several available information within the array that you can also use. Here’s an example of a record result from our function:

[0] => Array
	(
		[entity_id] => 1
		[entity_type_id] => 1
		[attribute_set_id] => 0
		[website_id] => 1
		[email] => john.doe@example.com
		[group_id] => 1
		[increment_id] => 000000001
		[store_id] => 1
		[created_at] => 2007-08-30 23:23:13
		[updated_at] => 2008-08-08 12:28:24
		[is_active] => 1
		[firstname] => John
		[lastname] => Doe
		[password_hash] => 2049484a4020ed15d0e4238db22977d5:eg
		[prefix] =>
		[middlename] =>
		[suffix] =>
		[taxvat] =>
		[default_billing] => 274
		[default_shipping] => 274
	)

Save the file as index.php and access it through your browser. It should display a table similar to the one below:

Sample table of customers from Magento

Here’s the index.php for your reference:

getCollection()
				  ->addAttributeToSelect('*');

	$result = array();
	foreach ($collection as $customer) {
		$result[] = $customer->toArray();
	}

	return $result;
}
?>


Customers



 0){
	foreach($result as $key => $value){
		echo "";
			echo "";
			echo "";
			echo "";
			echo "";
			echo "";
			echo "";
			echo "";
		echo "";
	}
}else{
	echo "";
}
?>


	ID
	Lastname
	Firstname
	Email
	Is Active?
	Date Created
	Date Updated

".$value['entity_id']." ".$value['lastname']." ".$value['firstname']." ".$value['email']." ";
			echo $value['is_active'] == 1 ? "Yes" : "No";
			echo " ".$value['created_at']." ".$value['updated_at']."
No records found

How to add Magento blocks, CSS and Javascript to an external site

Richard Feraro — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:01:40 +0000

You might have a Magento based website running online and wanted to extend parts of it (also known as blocks, which may include some css and js in the code) to an external site which may either be a blog, another CMS or any other PHP based web application. If you have been following my previous posts, you will know that by adding the Mage.php file of your Magento instance to your application, you can actually pull the needed HTML blocks at any time. The only problem is that most of the examples available online asks you to use the getChildHtml(‘your-block-here’) in which most the time frustrates you because of its complexity and limited resources of how you can actually use it.

There are other ways of doing it. Oddly enough, some are pretty simple and straight forward.

We will use a single HTML file which will serve as our ‘external’ site. The source code of our index.php is shown below:


  
    
    
  
  
  	
		How to add Magento blocks, CSS and Javascript to an external site
		Written by Richard Feraro | Posted on July 2, 2010
		Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a quam massa. Nullam eget erat metus. Sed vel justo enim. Proin rhoncus laoreet bibendum. Nullam eget est nisi. In eget sem in erat sodales bibendum. Morbi gravida augue sed felis tincidunt a congue dui placerat. Aliquam purus risus, mollis sed ullamcorper non, viverra eu odio. Suspendisse nibh nisi, suscipit at viverra eu, convallis ac odio. Morbi nec sapien eros. Suspendisse nec nulla erat, ac porttitor neque. Integer felis dolor, sollicitudin sed semper et, imperdiet nec turpis. Proin blandit luctus egestas.

The code above shall produce a page like the one in the screenshot below.

Our Sample External Page

We’ll start editing at the beginning of the file by adding a require_once() for our Mage.php file.

// Your Magento Mage.php
// Mage Enabler WordPress plugin users may
// skip these lines
require_once ("/your/magento/app/Mage.php");
umask(0);
Mage::app("default");

Proceed with adding the if(class_exists('Mage')){...} which encloses our Magento scripts to prevent the site from breaking if in case the Mage object failed to be instantiated. Check the inline comments for more details.

// Make sure to execute this block of code
// only if Mage object is present
if(class_exists('Mage')){
	// Instantiate session and generate needed cookie
	Mage::getSingleton('core/session', array('name' => 'frontend'));
	$Block = Mage::getSingleton('core/layout');

	// Start pulling the blocks
	$head = $Block->createBlock('Page/Html_Head');
	// Add default css
	// Magento adds the default skin directory
	// 'skin/frontend/default/default' before 'css/styles.css'
	// making it look like the URL below:
	// http://localhost/magento/skin/frontend/default/default/css/styles.css
	$head->addCss('css/styles.css');
	// Add Prototype JS file
	// Note that it automatically adds the 'js' directory at the beginning
	// making it look like the URL below:
	// http://localhost/magento/js/prototype/prototype.js
	$head->addJs('prototype/prototype.js');

	// Get the header's HTML
	$header = $Block->createBlock('Page/Html_Header');
	$header->setTemplate('page/html/header.phtml');

	// And the footer's HTML as well
	$footer = $Block->createBlock('Page/Html_Footer');
	$footer->setTemplate('page/html/footer.phtml');
}

That’s it. The codes above will generate the Magento session, the 3 blocks for CSS/JS (which uses the default skin of Magento and adds the Prototype JS file) and the HTML tags for the header and footer.

To use the blocks, insert the CSS/JS block right before the end tag of :

	getCssJsHtml() : '' ;
	?>

Proceed by adding the Magento header block right after the tag but before the

tag.


  	toHTML() : '' ;
	?>

Finally, add the Magento footer block right between the end tag of

and tag

	
	toHTML() : '' ;
	?>

It should display a page of our external site which now uses the header and footer of Magento. Check the source to see the additional tags generated.

Our Sample External Page with Magento CSS, Prototype JS, Header and Footer

The full index.php can be found below:

 'frontend'));
	$Block = Mage::getSingleton('core/layout');

	// Start pulling the blocks
	$head = $Block->createBlock('Page/Html_Head');
	// Add default css
	// Magento adds the default skin directory
	// 'skin/frontend/default/default' before 'css/styles.css'
	// making it look like the URL below:
	// http://localhost/magento/skin/frontend/default/default/css/styles.css
	$head->addCss('css/styles.css');
	// Add Prototype JS file
	// Note that it automatically adds the 'js' directory at the beginning
	// making it look like the URL below:
	// http://localhost/magento/js/prototype/prototype.js
	$head->addJs('prototype/prototype.js');

	// Get the header's HTML
	$header = $Block->createBlock('Page/Html_Header');
	$header->setTemplate('page/html/header.phtml');

	// And the footer's HTML as well
	$footer = $Block->createBlock('Page/Html_Footer');
	$footer->setTemplate('page/html/footer.phtml');
}

?>

  
    
    
	getCssJsHtml() : '' ;
	?>
  
  
  	toHTML() : '' ;
	?>
  	
		How to add Magento blocks, CSS and Javascript to an external site
		Written by Richard Feraro | Posted on July 2, 2010
		Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Duis a quam massa. Nullam eget erat metus. Sed vel justo enim. Proin rhoncus laoreet bibendum. Nullam eget est nisi. In eget sem in erat sodales bibendum. Morbi gravida augue sed felis tincidunt a congue dui placerat. Aliquam purus risus, mollis sed ullamcorper non, viverra eu odio. Suspendisse nibh nisi, suscipit at viverra eu, convallis ac odio. Morbi nec sapien eros. Suspendisse nec nulla erat, ac porttitor neque. Integer felis dolor, sollicitudin sed semper et, imperdiet nec turpis. Proin blandit luctus egestas. 
	
	toHTML() : '' ;
	?>

How to add a product with custom options into Magento shopping cart from an external site?

Richard Feraro — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:49:57 +0000

This is a follow up post to a previous article I wrote on how to add products into Magento but this time the script includes custom options (attributes) of the product. I used Magento version 1.4.0.1 in this example. Just copy the whole script and save it as index.php.

 "frontend"));

// get the current Magento cart
$cart = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/cart');

if(isset($_POST['submit'])){

	// call the Magento catalog/product model
	$product = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
					 // set the current store ID
					 ->setStoreId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getId())
					 // load the product object
					 ->load($_POST['product']);

	// start adding the product
	// format: addProduct(, array(
	//         'qty' => ,
	//         'super_attribute' => array( =>

How to fix the ‘The plugin does not have a valid header’ error when activating a WordPress plugin

Richard Feraro — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:03:27 +0000

You want to extend WordPress’ functionality and decided to download some plugins found in the Official WordPress Plugin repository. After searching the repo, you’ve found two plugins that accomplishes the tasks you needed to implement in your blog. Downloading the plugins gives you two ZIP files that when double-clicked, shows you the contents in the following format:

plugin-a.zip

plugin-a-folder
---- plugin-a-main-file.php
---- plugin-a-readme.txt

plugin-b.zip

plugin-b-folder
---- plugin-b-subfolder
-------- plugin-b-main-file.php
-------- plugin-b-readme.txt

There are two ways to install a plugin. Option 1 is to unzip the file and upload the contents to wordpress_root/wp-content/plugins/ directory. Option 2 is to use the Add New -> Upload option found in the left panel bar of the administrative page of WordPress. Let’s assume the two plugins went through the two installation options.

Installing ‘plugin-a.zip’ using Option 1

Unzip the file
Upload the contents to wordpress_root/wp-content/plugins/
Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Installed.
Locate plugin and click Activate link.
Result:
Plugin activated.

Installing ‘plugin-a.zip’ using Option 2

Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload
Locate the file plugin-a.zip by clicking the Browse button.
Click Install Now button.
Result:
Unpacking the package?
Installing the plugin?
Plugin installed successfully.
Click Activate Plugin link.
Result:
Plugin activated.

Installing ‘plugin-b.zip’ using Option 1

Unzip the file
Upload the contents to wordpress_root/wp-content/plugins/
Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Installed.
Locate plugin and click Activate link.
Error: Plugin does not exists in the list.

Installing ‘plugin-b.zip’ using Option 2

Login as admin and go to Plugins -> Add New -> Upload
Locate the file plugin-b.zip by clicking the Browse button.
Click Install Now button.
Result:
Unpacking the package?
Installing the plugin?
Plugin installed successfully.
Click Activate Plugin link.
WordPress ? Error
The plugin does not have a valid header.

Based on our testing, plugin-b.zip seems to fail on both methods of installation. To find out what is causing the error, we have to understand how the plugin installation works. Upon checking the core files I found this excerpt in get_plugins() function:

* WordPress only supports plugin files in the base plugins directory
* (wp-content/plugins) and in one directory above the plugins directory
* (wp-content/plugins/my-plugin). The file it looks for has the plugin data and
* must be found in those two locations. It is recommended that do keep your
* plugin files in directories.

The plugin data that the function is looking for can be found below:

So in order to properly install and activate a plugin, the following two conditions must be satisfied:

that a plugin main file (.php) must be placed in plugins root folder or in first-level subdirectory within plugins folder
and it should contain the necessary plugin data for identification/validation purposes

In the case of plugin-b.zip, although the main PHP file contains the needed plugin data, the validate_plugin() function returned an error since neither the file can be found or check if it contains the plugin data because it is placed in the second level subdirectory, a directory location in which the function is not designed to scan the content.

To fix the plugin-b.zip file, it needs to have the following content structure:

plugin-b.zip

plugin-b-folder
---- plugin-b-main-file.php
---- plugin-b-readme.txt

I hope this post will enlighten WordPress users who wants to maximize their blog’s potential

Mage Enabler is now available for download in the Official WordPress Plugin repository!

Richard Feraro — Wed, 12 May 2010 06:48:03 +0000

I’m soooo happy to see my very first plugin to be released for everyone to use. I hope it will help a lot of Magento and WordPress users!

Click! click! click!

ID	Lastname	Firstname	Email	Is Active?	Date Created	Date Updated
".$value['entity_id']."	".$value['lastname']."	".$value['firstname']."	".$value['email']."	"; echo $value['is_active'] == 1 ? "Yes" : "No"; echo "	".$value['created_at']."	".$value['updated_at']."
No records found

My Silly Point of View

How to fix the “Illegal scheme supplied, only alphanumeric characters are permitted” Magento error on Localhost using HTTP (fresh install)

Allow the admin panel to run on localhost.

Fixing the config data value.

Auto-select all items from multiple select dropdown using jQuery

How to create a new Magento customer account from an external site?

Separating message and author in ‘Stray Random Quotes’ WordPress plugin

My Silly Point of View won Best Technology Blog at 2010 Philippine Blog Awards

My Silly Point of View is nominated for Best Technology Blog!

How to pull the list of customers from Magento to an external site?

How to add Magento blocks, CSS and Javascript to an external site

How to add Magento blocks, CSS and Javascript to an external site

How to add Magento blocks, CSS and Javascript to an external site

How to add a product with custom options into Magento shopping cart from an external site?

Very Nice T-shirt

How to fix the ‘The plugin does not have a valid header’ error when activating a WordPress plugin

Installing ‘plugin-a.zip’ using Option 1

Installing ‘plugin-a.zip’ using Option 2

Installing ‘plugin-b.zip’ using Option 1

Installing ‘plugin-b.zip’ using Option 2

Mage Enabler is now available for download in the Official WordPress Plugin repository!

Auto-select all