Magento has released new versions of Magento Commerce and Open Source, basically aimed at enhancing the security and functionality of the product.
Resolving Glitches
The updated Magento resolves some significant glitches which plagued earlier versions. Despite the best of precautions and extensive testing, large platforms such as Magento invariably end up spawning many errors and bugs in the actual runtime errors. Such errors manifest when the code encounters use cases not conceived before.
The following are some of such glitches, which the new Magento 2.2.1 fix:
- A major glitch in the incumbent version was the sitemap crashing when setting scope of the name attribute to global. With the new update, such crash is a thing of the past.
- The incumbent version had a fatal error in the repository generator, with relation to exceptions. This too is fixed. Both InputException and NoSuchEntityException now require a Phrase object as their first constructor argument.
- Another vexing issue, where Magento did not retrieve relevant data when displaying reviews if $displayIfNoReviews was set to false, is also fixed.
- The typical import, scheduled import, and catalog permission tasks raised multiple issues leading to invalidation of indexes. These issues are now fixed.
- Magento now displays products filtered to a particular store view, even when the corresponding store view has been deleted. Previously, if such an eventuality came to pass, Magento displayed a continuously spinning spinner widget with an accompanying error message. The message itself was vague and read “A technical problem with the server created an error. Try again to continue what you were doing. If the problem persists, try again later.”
- The Reset button caused a JavaScript error on the URL rewrite creation page. This error has now been fixed.
- The new version spots significant reduction in JavaScript-related translation issues.
Issues Related to Product Display
A significant glitch in the incumbent version was the storefront not displaying the correct product prices. When a configurable product had two price options, or when both an out-of-stock and in-stock price was configured, Magento often displayed the out-of-stock price. The issue with priceScope, which caused pricing related issues, has been resolved in Magento 2.2.1.
Another glitch was configurable products showing up on the category page, even when all “children” are disabled by a mass action, and when the display out-of-stock products setting is off. This too, has been resolved.
Error in Inventory Count Resolved
The new version also resolves an error in inventory count. Hitherto, Magento counted both child and parent products when calculating quantity. Going forward, when a configurable product is part of a shipment created by REST, only the parent’s quantity will count towards the total quantity of shipped items.
Glitches Related to Payment
Two significant glitches related to payment methods plagued the incumbent version of Magento.
When a user double-clicked on the “Place Order” button, using the Braintree payment method to place an order, the system created duplicate order requests. This is no longer the case.
When customers tried to re-enter credit card information when the order was being processed, the system returned an error message “No such entity with customerId = 0.” Such error message no longer appears now, and the system completes processing the order.
In all, there are twenty-two community-submitted bug fixes and multiple pull requests in Magento Open Source.
Magento 2.2.1 is a comprehensive fix, identifying even relatively minor issues. A case in point is fixing the JavaScript date validation on the storefront. Hitherto, when customers registered for an account, and changed the default locale, the system did not validate the date of birth field. This is now fixed, offering a greater level of integrity to the process.
Read: New Business Intelligence for B2B companies by Magento
Functional Enhancements
The new Magento 2.2.1 offers over 40 functional enhancements. A bulk of these enhancements is contributions from community members, reflecting the true open-source nature of Magento.
The following are some of the significant functional enhancements:
Ease of Processes
The new version of Magento streamlines and eases the internal processes, making the e-commerce platform even easier and smoother to use. The following are some of the noted enhancements in this front:
- Ability to implement translations from themes.
- Ability to load default values. It is now possible to use config field type image or file, to set a default value to fields. Magento now properly loads default values for ArraySerialized fields.
- Support for management of multiple instances in the same crontab. The crontab is handy to schedule commands to be executed periodically.
- Ease of procedure to send currency to Google Analytics, helping websites conducting transactions in multiple currencies.
- Improvements in PayPal Express Checkout payment method, on how it processes virtual products. It is now possible to use PayPal Express Checkout to place an order in a split-database environment.
- If a credit card error occurs on an order, the user can now correct the error and successfully create a new order. Previously, Magento displayed the error message “A customer with the same email already exists in an associated website” on any subsequent order, even when the customer entered accurate credit card information.
- A new name attribute to the layout default renderer, and the provision to add a new column to the Admin Sales > Order table give additional options for order processing.
Read: Integrating Magento with your ERP? Follow these 5 best practices
Improvement in the Framework
Redis Cache is a popular tool to keep applications responsive even in the face of very high user loads. Hitherto, Magento faced a serious limitation in not being able to run in an environment where Redis cache is installed. This limitation is now overcome. Magento now runs in a Redis cache enabled environment and where PHPRedis extension is enabled.
Improvements in Search Functionality
Magento 2.2.1 fine-tunes and improves the search functionality. Search query results are now more consistent. Hitherto, identical search terms entered in different browser tabs returned different search results. Likewise, search terms from the same synonym group now return the same results. An added functionality is the ability to search for attribute values on the store-view level.
Security Enhancements
A good chunk of the changes in the new version pertains to security, with multiple enhancements to product security. The new releases contain about 15 security-related changes, plugging significant leaks related to unauthorized data leaks, cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and authenticated Admin user remote code execution vulnerabilities.
Read: How to solve two distressing pain points in Magento
The updated Magento integrates Signifyd Fraud Protection. Signifyd is now a leading provider of fraud protection and chargeback prevention services for e-commerce providers. The integration fills a vital gap in e-commerce payment security.
It is now possible to remove the system customer address and customer attributes from specific forms, to prevent it from being displayed on the frontend. This works to improve the security of customer data, protecting vital information from rogue eyes.
No confirmed attacks related to the issues fixed by Magento have occurred to date, underscoring Magento’s success in fixing bugs proactively, before the bad guys discover it first.
Customers have little patience in today’s fast-paced world. They would rather move on than waste time with a system which throws up glitches, or which force them to spend more time than absolutely necessary. The functional and security enhancements, and the bug fixes offered by Magento 2.2.1 indicate proactive fixes and attention to detail, aimed at customer convenience. Such a proactive approach to fine-tuning the app underscores the reason why Magento is so popular.
