Function isContextCheckout( ) not working

Question

I've checked that isContextCheckout() function is not working on the site. Where can I find it? I'm using the 1.8.1 version of Magento. Is there a bug reported for that function? It is being used in some template files, like account login (/template/persistent/customer/form/login.phtml):

<?php if (Mage::helper('checkout')->isContextCheckout()): ?><input name="context" type="hidden" value="checkout" /><?php endif; ?>

For me, its function is check if the buyer comes from checkout and add a parameter "context" with the value "checkout" in the url, so, in this way Magento can handle the success url and redirect to the checkout page. However, it's not working, I mean, the input hidden with name "context" doesn't appear in html because "isContextCheckout" probably is not working. I need that function because when the buyer wants to checkout, he/she is redirected to login page, and if he/she is not registered, it will be necessary make click on "Register" and to be taken to the registration page, however, the registration page url needs to have "?context=checkout" as a parameter.

Any helps?

Answer 1

The function can be found in the file app/code/core/Mage/Checkout/Helper/Data.php. This function is fairly simple in terms of code as it simply checks the parameters for a value.

/**
 * Check if context is checkout
 *
 * @return bool
 */
public function isContextCheckout()
{
    return (Mage::app()->getRequest()->getParam('context') == 'checkout');
}

For your needs I guess you will need to update the url for the registration page to contain the correct parameter but I wonder why you would redirect the user from the checkout page rather than the standard to include the registration in the billing step of checkout.