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A factory class in Magento 2 is used to create instances of models, collections, or other objects. Instead of using the new keyword, factories ensure that objects are instantiated with proper dependency injection. This adheres to Magento’s design principles.

This is one of the common Magento Interview Questions, as it helps interviewers gauge your understanding of Magento’s product offerings.

A service contract is a set of PHP interfaces that define the API of a module. It includes Data Interfaces and Service Interfaces, which provide a way to define and enforce module functionality. Service contracts ensure that modules remain stable and maintain backward compatibility.

Plugins (also called interceptors) allow developers to modify or extend the behavior of public methods in classes without changing the class itself. Plugins come in three types:

• Before: Executes before the original method.
• After: Executes after the original method.
• Around: Wraps around the original method, allowing it to control the execution flow.

Understanding the marketplace is essential, as it often comes up in Magento Interview Questions related to third-party integrations.

Magento’s ORM system abstracts database operations, allowing developers to interact with database tables through models and collections. The system supports relationships like one-to-many, many-to-many, and allows for querying, saving, and deleting data without writing raw SQL.

This is a frequent topic in Magento Interview Questions, as it addresses core architectural concepts.

A layout file is an XML file in Magento that defines the structure of a page and the blocks that will be rendered on it. Layout files can be used to assign templates, remove blocks, and change the overall structure of the page.

The Magento directory structure consists of the following key directories:

• app/: Contains core configuration files, themes, and custom code.
• lib/: Holds third-party libraries used in Magento.
• pub/: Contains publicly accessible files like CSS, JavaScript, and media.
• var/: Stores temporary files such as logs, caches, and reports.

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform that provides businesses with a flexible shopping cart system, control over the content and functionality of their online store, and robust marketing, SEO, and catalog-management tools.

The Magento Marketplace is an official platform where developers can buy, sell, and distribute extensions and themes. It offers a variety of extensions that improve functionality, such as SEO, security, payment gateways, and shipping integrations.

Customization in Magento is done through:

• Modules: Creating or extending custom modules in the app/code directory.
• Themes: Modifying the store’s appearance using a custom theme without changing core files.
• Plugins: Modifying the behavior of methods via Magento’s plugin (interceptor) system.
• Observers: Responding to events using Magento’s event-driven architecture.

The EAV model in Magento is used to store product and category data in a flexible way. Instead of having fixed columns for each product attribute, attributes are stored in separate tables. This allows dynamic addition of attributes without altering the database schema but can lead to performance challenges for large catalogs.

This model comes up frequently in Magento Interview Questions, especially in discussions about performance and database optimization.

Collections are used in Magento to fetch data from the database in an organized way. They represent a set of models and are used to retrieve, filter, and manipulate data. Collections support SQL-like methods (addFieldToFilter, setPageSize) to query the database.

Collections are fundamental to Magento’s ORM and are often covered in Magento Interview Questions regarding database management.

Some key improvements include:

• Enhanced performance through full-page caching, Varnish integration, and faster checkout process.
• Modern technology stack: Support for PHP 7+, MySQL 5.7, and modern JavaScript libraries.
• Better admin interface with an intuitive, user-friendly design.
• Streamlined customization: Using the plugin system and dependency injection (DI).
• Improved SEO features and more advanced catalog management.

Varnish is a reverse proxy server that acts as a cache for HTTP requests. In Magento, Varnish is used to store full-page content and serve cached versions of pages to users. This significantly reduces load times, especially for pages that do not require real-time data.

Steps to secure a Magento store include:

• Use strong admin passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA).
• Always keep Magento and its extensions up-to-date.
• Enable HTTPS and SSL across the entire store.
• Set up a custom admin URL.
• Regularly back up the store and database.
• Use security patches released by Magento.

Model-View-Controller (MVC) is a popular architectural pattern used in Magento and other web applications. It divides an application into three interconnected components: Model, View, and Controller.

• Model: This component manages the data and business logic of the application. It directly interacts with the database to retrieve or manipulate data.
• View: The view handles the presentation layer, displaying the user interface (UI) elements. It shows the data provided by the model and presents it to the user.
• Controller: The controller acts as an intermediary between the model and the view. It processes user input, handles requests, and determines which data should be displayed by the view. The controller communicates with the model to retrieve or update data and instructs the view on how to present the output.

This separation of concerns allows for more organized, scalable, and maintainable code.

A declarative schema is a feature introduced by Adobe to streamline the process of Magento installations and upgrades. In previous versions, developers had to manually write PHP scripts to manage database changes for each new version of Magento, which could be time-consuming and complicate the codebase. With a declarative schema, database changes are defined in XML files, allowing Magento to automatically handle updates, making the process more efficient and reducing code clutter. It’s important for developers to stay up-to-date with this and other evolving Magento technologies to improve their development practices.

Steps to create a custom module:

1. Define the module.xml file in app/code/VendorName/ModuleName/etc/.
2. Register the module with a registration.php file.
3. Set up necessary configuration files like di.xml and routes.xml.
4. Implement business logic using controllers, models, and views.

Module creation is one of the most common technical Magento Interview Questions.