FAQ and Common Issues

This section provides only the basic answers to some of the most frequently asked questions. For more detailed information about the Shopsys Framework, please see Shopsys Framework Knowledge Base.

Index

What are the phing targets?

Every phing target is a task that can be executed simply by php phing <target-name> command. See more about phing targets in Console Commands for Application Management (Phing Targets).

What are the data fixtures good for?

Data fixtures are actually demo data available in the Shopys Framework. For their installation, use the phing target db-fixtures-demo. This phing target is usually triggered as the part of other phing targets, because it requires the application in a certain state (eg. with configured domains and an existing database structure), see build.xml. Demo data are used for automatic tests and also for installation of demo shop with prepared data.

How to change a domain URL?

The change of domain url requires two steps. In the first step, you need to modify the domain url in the configuration file config/domains_urls.yaml. In the second step, you need to replace all occurrences of the old url address in the database with the new url address. This scenario is described in more detail in the tutorial How to Set Up Domains and Locales (Languages).

How to use database migrations and why the developers should use shopsys:migrations:generate instead of the default Doctrine one?

Migrations (also known as database migrations) are used to unify the database schema with ORM. On Shopsys Framework, you can use the phing target db-migrations-generate for migrations generation. Compared to the standard migrations generation process from Doctrine, this phing target does not generate "irreversible" migrations, such as migrations with the operations DROP and DELETE. Migrations are described more in detail in the docs Database Migrations

Do I have to run coding standards check over all files?

No, you do not have to. Some of the coding standards check commands are available in two forms. The first basic form is used to check all files. The second additional form, commands with the suffix -diff, is used to check only modified files. For example, the phing target standards starts checking of all files in the application while the phing target standards-diff starts checking only the modified files. Modifications are detected via git by comparison against the origin/master version.

Is the application https ready or does it need some extra setting?

Shopsys Framework is fully prepared for HTTPS. You can just use https://<your-domain> in your config/domains_urls.yaml configuration file. Of course, an SSL certificate must be installed on your server.

How can I easily translate and set up my new language constants?

To set up the user translations of labels and messages, use the files messages.en.po and validators.en.po, where en represents the locale. These files are generated for each locale you use, and you can find them in the translations/ directory. Language settings are described more in detail in the tutorial How to Set Up Domains and Locales (Languages). For more information about translations, see the separate article.

How to set up deployment and production server?

We recommend installation using the Docker for production. See how to install Shopsys Framework in production and how to proceed when deploying in the tutorial Installation Using Docker on Production Server.

How to set up the administration with a different locale/language (e.g. Czech)?

The administration uses en locale by default. If you want to switch it to the another locale, set a parameter shopsys.admin_locale in your config/parameters_common.yaml configuration. However, the selected locale has to be one of registered domains locale. This scenario is described in more detail in the tutorial How to Set Up Domains and Locales (Languages).

What are the differences between "listable", "sellable", "offered" and "visible" products?

Products can be grouped into several groups according to their current status or according to what they are used for. These groups are described in more detail in the article How to Work with Products.

How calculated attributes work?

Some attributes that are used on the Shopsys Framework are not set directly, but their value is automatically calculated based on other attributes. For example, if a category of products does not have a name for a locale of the specific domain, this category will be automatically set as not visible on this domain. See more about calculated attributes in the article How to Work with Products.

How do I change the environment (PRODUCTION/DEVELOPMENT/TEST)?

The environment is determined by the existence of the files PRODUCTION, DEVELOPMENT, TEST in the root of your project. This file is created automatically during the run of a command composer install. If the command composer install is executed, the file DEVELOPMENT is created. If the command composer install --no-dev is executed, the file PRODUCTION is created.

You can change the environment manually by using the command php bin/console shopsys:environment:change.

Are some periodic tasks part of the Shopsys Framework (cron)?

Yes, there is some prepared configuration for Shopsys Framework cron commands in a file src/Resources/config/services/cron.yaml in FrameworkBundle. Do not forget to set up a cron on your server to execute php phing cron every 5 minutes.

Why are you using entity data instead of entities for Symfony forms?

We are using entity data objects instead of entities because Symfony forms need setters for all fields and we don't want to mess entities with them.

What is the configuration file services_test.yaml good for?

services_test.yaml is a service configuration file that is loaded in TEST environment in addition to the standard configuration defined in services.yaml as sometimes the configuration differs from the standard one and we need to override it. E.g., by default, all our services are defined as private. However, in tests, we are retrieving some services directly from the container hence we need to have them public in TEST environment.

How to change the behavior of the product search on the front-end?

Full-text product search on the front-end is handled via Elasticsearch. If you want to change its behavior (e.g. make the EAN not as important or change the way the search string is handled - whether to use an n-gram or not) please see Product Searching.

Why are emails sent before end of the script and not immediately

Project uses SwiftMailer package for sending emails and defaultly it has set spool queue that stores all mails into memory until the script execution is at the end. This spooling method helps the user not to wait for the next page to load while the email is sending. However, based on implementations of many projects, project gained functionality that releases spool after the *cronModule run is ended in case of cron phing target that runs all cron modules at once. It is also possible to turn the spool off by removing it from swiftmailer.yaml or changing the behavior of storing emails based on symfony docs or snc_redis docs.

Where does the business logic belong?

The business logic should be implemented directly in an entity every time when there is no need for external services. Otherwise, the logic is in facades (resp. the facades are used as delegates to other services, e.g. another Facade, Repository, Calculation, etc.). You can read more about the model architecture in Introduction to model architecture.

How can I create a friendly URL for my entity?

See Friendly URL article.

How can I create Front-end Breadcrumb navigation?

See Front-end Breadcrumb Navigation article.

Do you have any tips how to debug emails during development in Docker?

Yes we have, you can easily use djfarrelly/MailDev library that provides you web UI where you can see the emails including their headers: 1. In your docker-compose.yml, change the smtp-server service: diff smtp-server: - image: namshi/smtp:latest + image: djfarrelly/maildev container_name: shopsys-framework-smtp-server + ports: + - "8025:80" 1. Run docker-compose up -d 1. Now you are able to see all the application emails in the inbox on http://127.0.0.1:8025.

Note: Beware, by using this setting, no emails are delivered to their original recipients. See Outgoing emails in the documentation of the library for more information.

Can I see what is really happening in the Codeception acceptance tests when using Docker?

Yes, you can! Check the quick guide.

Why is there a faked PHP 7.4.1 platform in the Composer config?

As a general rule, packages and libraries that depend on PHP 7.4.1 will work as expected even on any higher 7.x version, but not vice versa. Maintainers of PHP are focusing on backward-compatibility (even if there were some incompatible changes introduced in PHP 7.4, in practice it doesn't cause issues).

Using the config.platform.php option in composer.json allows us to force Composer to install such dependencies, that work for all supported versions of PHP by Shopsys Framework. These dependencies are locked during each release of SSFW so users that install it can download exact versions of all libraries and tools that were tested and proved working. This helps to eliminate unforeseen issues during installation. See Composer docs for more details on version locking.

Without this forced platform version, you could encounter issues when working on your project with developers that use a different version of PHP. For example, your composer.lock could contain dependencies that not all developers can install. If that's not your case, you can safely remove the config.platform.php option from your composer.json and run composer update to use higher versions of your dependencies.

How to make PHPStorm and PHPStan understand that I use extended classes?

There is a phing target that automatically fixes all relevant @var and @param annotations, and adds proper @method and @property annotations to your classes so the static analysis understands the class extensions properly. You can read more in the "Framework extensibility" article.

SMTP container cannot send email with error "Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname"

SMTP container should have set hostname to the domain of the server, where your application is running. You can set this hostname in your docker-compose file like this:

  smtp-server:
      restart: always
      image: namshi/smtp:latest
+     hostname: my-host-machine-hostname.provider.org