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Creating And Applying Patches

In this tutorial we will cover how to create a patch and then configure composer to apply that patch when the module is installed.


Why is this needed?
Sometimes there are fixes you need to apply to code that isn't directly in source control. This method allows you to keep these files out of source control whilst still being able to manage (in source control) the changes to these files.

Scenario

We need to set the default value of $_skipSaleableCheck within vendor/magento/module-catalog/Helper/Product.php to true
Code snippet of file to be changed.

/**
 * Catalog category helper
 * @SuppressWarnings(PHPMD.CouplingBetweenObjects)
 * @SuppressWarnings(PHPMD.CookieAndSessionMisuse)
 */
class Product extends \Magento\Framework\Url\Helper\Data
{
    const XML_PATH_PRODUCT_URL_USE_CATEGORY = 'catalog/seo/product_use_categories';

    const XML_PATH_USE_PRODUCT_CANONICAL_TAG = 'catalog/seo/product_canonical_tag';

    const XML_PATH_AUTO_GENERATE_MASK = 'catalog/fields_masks';

    /**
     * Flag that shows if Magento has to check product to be saleable (enabled and/or inStock)
     *
     * @var boolean
     */
    protected $_skipSaleableCheck = false;

    ...
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Prerequisites

  • cweagans/composer-patches must be installed.
  • You have a "patches" directory. We usually keep this at the root of the project /patches

Steps

  1. cd into the project root and make a copy of the file.
cp vendor/magento/module-catalog/Helper/Product.php vendor/magento/module-catalog/Helper/Product.php.orig
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  1. Make the changes you require to the file (not the newly created .orig file)
    vendor/magento/module-catalog/Helper/Product.php is now
/**
 * Catalog category helper
 * @SuppressWarnings(PHPMD.CouplingBetweenObjects)
 * @SuppressWarnings(PHPMD.CookieAndSessionMisuse)
 */
class Product extends \Magento\Framework\Url\Helper\Data
{
    const XML_PATH_PRODUCT_URL_USE_CATEGORY = 'catalog/seo/product_use_categories';

    const XML_PATH_USE_PRODUCT_CANONICAL_TAG = 'catalog/seo/product_canonical_tag';

    const XML_PATH_AUTO_GENERATE_MASK = 'catalog/fields_masks';

    /**
     * Flag that shows if Magento has to check product to be saleable (enabled and/or inStock)
     *
     * @var boolean
     */
    protected $_skipSaleableCheck = true;

    ...
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  1. Change into the module directory
cd vendor/magento/module-catalog;
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  1. Create the diff (patch file) we usually us ticket numbers from our project management system though you can use anything unique that works for you
diff -u Helper/Product.php.orig Helper/Product.php > 1001-hot-fix.patch
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N.B Here you would replace 1001-hot-fix.patch with an appropriate name.

  1. Open the patch file and remove the ".orig" from the patch file.
    If you open 1001-hot-fix.patch you will see it contains
--- Helper/Product.php.orig  2020-09-11 14:17:15.708644077 +0100
+++ Helper/Product.php  2020-09-11 14:17:30.301170128 +0100
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
      *
      * @var boolean
      */
-    protected $_skipSaleableCheck = false;
+    protected $_skipSaleableCheck = true;

     /**
      * @var array
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We need to remove .orig so that the file looks like

--- Helper/Product.php  2020-09-11 14:17:15.708644077 +0100
+++ Helper/Product.php  2020-09-11 14:17:30.301170128 +0100
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
      *
      * @var boolean
      */
-    protected $_skipSaleableCheck = false;
+    protected $_skipSaleableCheck = true;

     /**
      * @var array
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N.B there will be a line ending at the end of the file. You need to ensure that this is maintained. It isn't showed in the snippets as it is just an empty line.

  1. Undo the changes you made to the file.
mv Helper/Product.php.orig Helper/Product.php
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  1. Move the patch file into your patches directory
    Note: the /patches directory is in the project root/patches
mv *.patch ~/htdocs/patches/
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  1. Update the patch config within the project composer.json
    To do this we need to know the module name, in this case it is magento/module-catalog. If you are unsure it can be found in the modules composer.json
    vendor/magento/module-catalog/composer.json
{
    "name": "magento/module-catalog",
    ...
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Now open /composer.json.
You are looking for patches under the extra node. If yours doesn't exist you can paste the code below in. If it does exist, you will need to add the new bits in.

"extra": {
    "patches": {
        "magento/module-catalog": {
            "Change default _skipSaleableCheck": "patches/1001-hot-fix.patch"
        }
    }
}
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You can specify multiple patches for the same module, if unsure please see here

  1. Remove the module code from vendor.
rm -rf vendor/magento/module-catalog
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  1. Reinstall using composer
composer install --no-dev
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You should see the following

Package operations: 1 install, 0 updates, 0 removals
Gathering patches for root package.
Gathering patches for dependencies. This might take a minute.
  - Installing magento/module-catalog (103.0.5): Downloading (100%)
  - Applying patches for magento/module-catalog
    patches/1001-hot-fix.patch (Change default _skipSaleableCheck)
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If you check vendor/magento/module-catalog/Helper/Product.php you will see the changes from the patch file have been applied.

  1. You should now commit all the files you have changed to source control. In this case it would be:
  • /patches/1001-hot-fix.patch
  • /composer.json

Complete
From this point on whenever somebody has you commit, and they install this package it will be updated by the patch file.

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