Magento is an eCommerce platform that gives online merchants complete control over the functionality, content, and appearance of their online store. It offers great marketing, SEO, and catalog-management tools.
Learning about Magento is a daunting task, and if you’re moving to Magento 2 we’ll try to make the transition smooth by explaining some of its architectural concepts to better understand the platform.
Below you’ll read about a few important concepts you should know if you’re using Magento 2.
Sitemaps
If you wish to improve your SEO performance, sitemaps are one of the most essential elements that might help you achieve that. A sitemap is a navigational tool containing links to all located resources on a website, meaning it provides clear guidance of the content and structure of a website. For Magento 2 sites, XML and HTML sitemaps are the most popular ones.
If you want to know how to generate a sitemap in Magento 2, you need to follow appropriate instructions so your website can run smoothly. The XML sitemap usually helps search engines understand the site’s structure, while the HTML sitemap supports users to explore the site and find the items they are looking for more effectively.
Module structure
Magento is a collection of individual components installed through Composer which is a PHP dependency manager. The software is fundamental to the structure of Magento 2. It applies to Magento core packages (modules/themes) as well as third-party libraries. You’ll probably be creating Composer packages if you’re a developer of distributable Magento extensions.
Whether your code is just local customization or a marketplace extension it will surely make your life easier since all files related to a module now are placed in a single directory. A top-level directory contains subdirectories including Block, Model, View, etc. Within view/frontend or view/adminhtml are templates and layout directories, and also a web directory containing the module’s static assets like CSS and JavaScript.
Dependency injection
A dependency, in programming languages, is known as the object which is needed by a class to perform some functions, while the injection is the passing of that particular dependency to a dependent class/object. Dependency injection is a package style pattern implementing inversion of management for partitioning dependencies. In simple terms, it injects the dependency into the class from another source.
For example, by using the Magento 2 Helper Class, it means your class has a dependency of that Magento 2 Helper Object. In simple words, the most pragmatic approach would be to purchase the ready-made gate from a vendor and install it and avoid the hassle. That’s the purpose of dependency injection, it decouples your class from the construction of its dependency.
Code generation
Code generation and deployment play a major role in Magento 2. The application generates code to create non-existent classes, and unlike some other libraries and languages, you can look at the generated code on the file system and see what happens, and also debug the code. If the Magento application is not set for production mode, then code is generated when the application cannot find a class when executing the code.
Moreover, you can use the code compiler to generate code at any moment. Compiling the application in Magento 2 means performing code generation for any eligible class met by the configuration/code scanner, and also performing several different dependency injection optimizations. Generating code in Magento 2 assures you that the code is correct, it writes the boilerplate code to enable you to write more interesting and challenging code and has consistent implementation.
Service layer
The Magento 2 service layer introduces a layer in between the main business logic of a module and any external code referencing the components of that module. It serves as a link between the presentation and domain layer, as well as resource-specific data. This layer grants access to API, and it resides above the domain layer and below the presentation layer.
The service layer implements service contracts defined using the PHP interface, allowing you to add or change the business logic resource model without causing the system to crash. This can be done through the dependency injection configuration file (di.xml). Service contract interfaces are located in the API sub-directory of a module, and if you’re producing distributive code, you’d be advised to create classes and service contracts for your entities for maintaining future compatibility with others’ code.
Final thoughts
There are 3 main components of Magento including modules, themes, and language packages. Magento 2 provides better services including better security which is essential for managing an online store. There are many more Magento 2 concepts to understand, so make sure to study the platform well before deciding to use it to make your life much easier.
