Tutorials for Magento and Joomla! - Yireo

Bridge is not available

When the bridge connection between Joomla! and Magento is unavailable, MageBridge displays the offline message inside the component area. By default, this states that the bridge currently unavailable, but it doesn't state the reason why - something you shouldn't bother your users with anyway. This guide helps you analyse the problems step by step.

When does the bridge go offline?

There are various reasons why the MageBridge connection between Joomla! and Magento might become unavailable:

• If you have set the bridge offline manually
• The Magento homepage is empty
• If Magento could not be reached
• If the Magento application dies unexpectedly
• If the Magento application sends unexpected response

Manual offline

MageBridge offers the option to bring the bridge offline manually. If you are working on a Magento upgrade, this might be good way to show a friendly message to your visitors. Within the MageBridge Configuration in the Joomla! Administrator, the Bridge tab contains this setting plus an option to modify the text being displayed to your visitors.

Empty Magento homepage

There's actually one more reason why the offline message could be displayed: If the Magento homepage is blank (which indicates actually an incomplete Magento installation), MageBridge only sees an empty content-area and there for concludes the bridge is offline. In this case you can solve this quickly by entering some kind of content on the Magento CMS homepage, through the Magento Admin Panel.

Magento is unavailable

If Joomla! is unable to contact Magento, this is a good reason for the bridge to go offline. In almost all cases, you can troubleshoot these problems in the MageBridge backend in the Joomla! Administrator. Open up the MageBridge Configuration and save it again, to see if this gives any problems. Go over the System Check page to see if all requirements are met. On the same page, there's also the option for an Internal Browse Test which might give you clues as well.

When Magento is unavailable, it might be related to DNS-settings on the webserver. But it might also be related to the API-settings: Run through the settings for the API-user in Magento (permissions, password) to make sure it is correctly used by Joomla!.

Check the MageBridge debugging logs

When the bridge encounters an error on the Magento side, the bridge might crash but may still contain debugging information. Usually a sign for this, is that the component area is empty, but MageBridge modules are still showing content. For the debugging information to become available, follow the steps outlined in the MageBridge Troubleshooting Guide.

Once debugging is enabled in MageBridge, browse to the Logs page within the MageBridge component. When visiting the Magento pages on the Joomla! frontend, the logs should fill up with log-records. Most log-records are only used for debugging, but you should be looking for the message-type Error.

You can easily choose to display only Errors by selecting the type in the upperright corner of the Logs-page. If there are any errors, most likely this is a PHP-error of some kind which occurs in Magento (not MageBridge). You need to resolve this error in Magento. If in doubt, just post your question on our Yireo Support Forum.

Inspecting the Magento reports

Sometimes the bridge just crashes, and no response is being sent to MageBridge at all. In this case, MageBridge is unable to log anything, but a lot of times Magento still does. Reports in Magento are stored by default on the filesystem - in the Magento directory var/report. An error in this directory might look like the following:

a:5:{i:0;s:307:"Warning: session_start() [<a href='function.session-start'>function.session-start</a>]: The session id contains 
illegal characters, valid characters are a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and '-,'  in MAGENTO/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract/Varien.php 
on line 115";i:1;s:2469:"#0 [internal function]: mageCoreErrorHandler(2, 'session_start()...', '...', 115, Array)
#1 MAGENTO/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract/Varien.php(115): session_start()
#2 MAGENTO/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract/Varien.php(155): Mage_Core_Model_Session_Abstract_Varien->start('frontend')
#3 MAGENTO/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract.php(84): Mage_Core_Model_Session_Abstract_Varien->init('core', 'frontend')
#4 MAGENTO/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session.php(39): Mage_Core_Model_Session_Abstract->init('core', 'frontend')
...

If you post such an error on our forum, you really only need to post the top of this error:

a:5:{i:0;s:307:"Warning: session_start() [<a href='function.session-start'>function.session-start</a>]: The session id contains 
illegal characters, valid characters are a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and '-,'  in MAGENTO/app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract/Varien.php 
on line 115";i:1;s:2469:"#0 [internal function]: mageCoreErrorHandler(2, 'session_start()...', '...', 115, Array)

A lot of times, such an error is related not to MageBridge but to Magento only, because it occurs in Magento.

Inspecting the Apache logs

If neither MageBridge nor Magento are capable of handling the error, the error could be logged in the Apache logs as well. Apache usually maintains a regular logfile and a special ErrorLog. Only the last one is interesting, because it might contain PHP-errors or some other type of error.

Access to your Apache ErrorLog should be granted by your hosting provider. Sometimes you can directly access the logs through FTP, sometimes you can use some kind of control panel for this (DirectAdmin, CPanel), but sometimes you need to contact your hosting provider for this.