Magento 1.9 - Order object passed to event observer is empty

Question

I am trying to get data from a new order placed on our website to use it for integration with our ERP/CRM system.

I use the event sales_order_place_after and my observer function fires as expected, but it seems the order object passed to the observer has no data at all. I also tried the event checkout_submit_all_after as pointed in this answer with same results.

After placing a new order I can see it normally in the admin panel, with all the items and customer data, so maybe I am not accessing it correctly in the observer.

My observer function looks like this:

public function newOrder(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
{
    Mage::log(print_r('new order function start', true), null, 'new-order.log');

    // tried both those
    $order = $observer->getEvent()->getData('order');
    $order = $observer->getEvent()->getOrder(); // tried this too

    // tried both those
    $items = $order->getAllVisibleItems();
    $items = $order->getAllItems();

    $customer_id = $order->getCustomerId();
    $customer_name = $order->getCustomerName();
    $customer_email = $order->getCustomerEmail();

    // Those had same result
    //$customer_id = $order->getCustomer()->getId();
    //$customer_name = $order->getCustomer()->getName();
    //$customer_email = $order->getCustomer()->getEmail();

    Mage::log(print_r($items, true), null, 'new-order.log');
    Mage::log(print_r($customer_id, true), null, 'new-order.log');
    Mage::log(print_r($customer_name, true), null, 'new-order.log');
    Mage::log(print_r($customer_email, true), null, 'new-order.log');

    Mage::log(print_r('new order function end', true), null, 'new-order.log');
}

And the output on the log file:

2017-05-18T11:10:10+00:00 DEBUG (7): new order function start

The end function log never appears. Am I accessing the data in a wrong way?

Answer 1

The object is not empty, it is just to large to write it to logfile. This breaks the observer method and your last Mage::log('function end') is not reached.

For debugging of large objects you should use debug() the that works with every type of Varien Object. Advantage over var_dump or print_r is that it will leave out all recursive data and keeps your log small.

/**
 * Present object data as string in debug mode
 *
 * @param mixed $data
 * @param array $objects
 * @return string
 */
public function debug($data=null, &$objects=array())
{
    if (is_null($data)) {
        $hash = spl_object_hash($this);
        if (!empty($objects[$hash])) {
            return '*** RECURSION ***';
        }
        $objects[$hash] = true;
        $data = $this->getData();
    }
    ...
}

Try this instead ...

public function newOrder(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
{
    $order = $observer->getOrder();
    Mage::log($items->debug(), null, 'new-order.log');

    # only get available data keys
    Mage::log(array_keys($order->getData()), null, 'new-order.log');
}