Overview of the checkout layout rendering process
The Magento checkout process is unique compared to other Magento pages. It is built dynamically using JavaScript, rendering the page with UI components and Knockout.js templates. In this lesson, we will dig deeper into the code and understand how the Magento checkout process works.
Layout XML and UI Components
Layout XML plays a significant role in rendering the checkout process. There is a deep parent-child relationship within the XML files, which are all merged into a single, large XML tree. This tree is then converted into a JSON object and passed into Magento’s UI rendering process.
Exploring the Core Files
To understand this process better, let’s take a look at vendor/magento/module-ui and then navigate to view/base/web/js/core/app. This file is responsible for handling the incoming XML tree, grabbing its components, and rendering the layout that gets defined.
Furthermore, let’s explore the Magento Checkout module by going to view/frontend/layout and then checkout_index_index.xml. This layout file has just one block added to the “content” container, which renders the onepage.phtml template, kicking off the entire Knockout.js rendering process.
The XML Tree and UI Components
The checkout_index_index.xml file contains a massive tree wherein all the nodes either create or modify UI components to be rendered on the page. If you are familiar with UI components, you already know how most of this works. This giant XML tree is simply a collection of small UI components merged together within the XML file and then rendered.
An important aspect to understand here is the “children” item nodes. These nodes are extremely prevalent within the file, and each one contains other child UI components, which are typically passed through the “children” item to the parent UI Component.
Display Area Property and Custom UI Components
UI components also have a displayArea property, which is passed into almost every single one of these UI components. For example, the “authentication” UI Component is assigned to the “authentication” displayArea. There is no correspondence between these names; they can be the same or completely unrelated.
You can also create your own UI components by tapping into the layout XML through a checkout_index_index.xml file. When Magento’s XML merging takes place, all of these XML files will be merged into one giant tree, including your custom file.
Extending Functionality with RequireJS
You can use RequireJS to replace or extend existing UI components and templates. The Magento 2 checkout offers a lot of extensibility and flexibility, but this also makes it extremely complex.
To better understand the Magento checkout process, we will break down these topics in detail with examples using real-life scenarios. By the end of this course, you should be comfortable tackling any aspect of this intricate checkout process.