A resource in Magento is used to manage database connections. Resources are defined under the global XML tag of any config.xml file. To make a new database connection, we have to add an XML file, such as the app/etc/config.xml file. Each resource has a name. Connection names are generally of the pattern module_read, module_write, or module_setup. In this recipe, we will play with the resource and create a new database connection, which would work on any database that we specify.
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We will print the data in the product view page for development purpose. Let us open the view.phtml file from app/design/frontend/YOUR_INTERFACE/YOUR_THEME/template/catalog/product/ folder.
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Append the following code snippet at the top of view.phtml:
';
var_export($singleton->debug());
echo '
';
?>
Visit any product details page to see the results in your browser.
getConnection('core_read');
$results = $conn->query('SELECT * FROM admin_user')->fetchAll();
echo '';
var_export($results);
echo '
';
?>
Run this code by visiting any product details page. You should see a page similar to this:
'localhost',
'username' => 'root',
'password' => 'pass',
'dbname' => 'ess'
);
$_resource = Mage::getSingleton('core/resource');
$_conn = $_resource->createConnection('customConnection','pdo_mysql', $conf);
$results = $_conn->query('SELECT * FROM wp_posts')->fetchAll();
echo '';
print_r($results);
echo '
';
?>
This way we can connect an external database and run the query using Magento’s resource. We have connected an external WordPress database and fetched the wp_posts table. To see it in action, visit a product details page.
Here is another filter for SKU:
getCollection();
echo "Our collection now has " . count($collection_of_products) .' item(s)';
$collection_of_products->addFieldToFilter('sku', 'mycomputer');
echo '';
var_export($collection_of_products->getFirstItem()->getData());
echo '
';
?>
