Brave New World of Magento 2.4

[Maksym Novik]

Authors:

Maksym Novik, Backend Developer at Decima Digital, Magento Community Maintainer

Oleksandr Kravchuk, Backend Developer at Vaimo, Magento Master

Magento 2.4 is now generally available! Since 2015, Magento has empowered merchants to envision and create customer experiences that matter. The secret behind this is no secret at all: Magento allows developers to customize and extend every aspect of the customer journey, store operations, and system integrations, all while leveraging the insights and abilities of the Magento ecosystem of developers to supercharge delivery of features and enhancements. Magento 2.4 has many new & improved features, security enhancements, and tech stack & framework updates. Here’s what you should know.

Tech stack, framework, and dependency updates

Each Magento release offers numerous enhancements and fixes, many of which are developed in collaboration with the ecosystem. Major releases are significant in that they offer the chance for backward-incompatible updates such as updating versions of underlying applications and libraries. A complete list and explanation of these updates are available on Magento DevDocs. Below are some highlights.

Tech stack updates

• PHP 7.3-7.4
• MySQL 8.0
• Elasticsearch 7.0

Framework and library updates

• Introduced Controller Decomposition
• Upgraded PHPUnit to 9.1;
• Replaced Zend Framework (EOL) with Laminas
• Added support for PHPStan, a static analysis tool
• Removed support for the MySQL search engine (fully replaced by Elasticsearch)

Functional Changes

Two-factor authentication (2FA). New in Magento 2.4, 2FA offers increased protection for any user requiring access to the store's administrative area by requiring a temporary, per-client code along with the user's password. More details are available in the related DevDocs on 2FA in Magento.

New Media Gallery. The new, enhanced Media Gallery in Magento 2.4 offers the same features as the original Media Gallery, but with a more modern and intuitive user interface as well as integration with Adobe Stock. 

Additionally, the Magento installer web UI is removed and now the only way to install and upgrade Magento is via command line.

Functional and Performance Updates to Magento Inventory

Magento’s inventory modeling and features underwent a massive change when multi-source inventory (MSI) was introduced in Magento 2.3. The initial MSI release provided a huge leap forward in terms of features and capabilities. For the first time in Magento, it was possible to define and manage inventory from multiple warehouses along with a source selection algorithm. This fundamental change allowed for numerous additional features as well as the ability to extend the system for customizing inventory behavior and integrating with third-party software. The project was built and managed in collaboration with the developer ecosystem; full details are available on GitHub and DevDocs.)

However, as is so often the case in software, there was a near-immediate desire for additional features as well as some changes to improve performance, and eventually, the MSI project became the Magento Inventory project in 2.3.3. Magento 2.4 ships with the latest iteration Magento Inventory. New inventory features in this release add omni-channel capabilities and extend support for additional product types:

In-store pickup. What was once an uncommon, almost experimental combination of the online and offline worlds, the in-store pickup has become a customer expectation for merchants of all sizes across multiple geographies and industry verticals. For more information on the project - including how to become involved - please see the dedicated article.

Full bundle product support. Magento Inventory shipped with support for simple and configurable products, eventually adding support for grouped products and then partial support for bundle products. Bundle products are now fully compatible.

There are also some exciting performance improvements with the latest release: 

• Products Landing Page (PLP) - up to 14%
• Search - up to 13%
• Product Details Page (PDP) - up to 5%
• Add to cart - up to 30%
• Checkout - up to 15%
• Success Page - up to 10%

The good news is that performance for inventory-related operations in Magento 2.4 is on par with or even better than that of the legacy inventory system (<2.3).  The even better news is that the dedicated Inventory project has several additional performance improvements nearing completion, and these will be rolled out quarterly along with other platform updates. Your investment today in implementing the current inventory system provides more features, with the best performance, and the easiest path to receiving upcoming improvements. For those wishing to be a more direct part of Magento code history, the Inventory project is one of the most significant and rewarding Community Engineering projects with which to involve yourself.

(For developers interested in the evolution of performance in the Inventory area of Magento, please see this additional article.)

Conclusion

The Magento 2.4 release is a big step forward for the entire Magento ecosystem. While the numerous new and updated features are sufficient enough to be a release on their own, updating the libraries and adjacent technologies on which Magento relies is just as important. The combination of these together allows us to continue the tradition of leading the charge in creating custom commerce experiences that push the industry forward.