Magento 2 getExtensionAttributes return null

Question

I am writing an Observer to Magento\Customer\Account\Index but the Objects from class \Magento\Customer\Model\Customer return null when getExtensionAttributes is executed.

  $customer = $customerFactory->create()->load($customerID); 
  //$customerRepository->get($customerID);
    $ext = $customer->getExtensionAttributes();
    if($ext == null){
        throw new \Exception(" var ext = null");
    }

I used CustomerRepository and CustomerFactory to get $customer

Answer 1

You don't need to use CustomerFactory for getting customer data.

CustomerRepository is enough for getting a customer data.

You need to changes the code if($ext == null){ to if($ext === null){.

//$customer = $customerFactory->create()->load($customerID); 
$customerRepository->get($customerID);
$ext = $customer->getExtensionAttributes();
if($ext === null){
    throw new \Exception(" var ext = null");
}

=== means Identical match condition which is vastly used at PHP 7,

See https://www.w3schools.com/php/php_operators.asp`

Answer 2

It is happening because the Magento\Customer\Model\Customer is not an Extensible Model (does not extend the \Magento\Framework\Api\AbstractExtensibleObject class), it extending the \Magento\Framework\Model\AbstractModel which is not an extensible object. You must use the repository, because it will return the instance of Magento\Customer\Model\Data\Customer which is extensible object.

Or you can use your code, but with Magento\Customer\Model\Data\CustomerFactory.