Magento 2.4 Release date: What things you need to notice!

Magento 2.4.0. Release date

Magento Commerce 2.4.0 allows Magento developers to support PHP 7.4, ElSTERearch 7.6.x and MySQL 8.0. This release helps significantly change security including support for two-factor authentication in Administrators by default.

However, the integration of payment methods Authorize.Net, Braintree, eWay, CyberSource and Worldpay has been removed from the core code, so users should switch to the official extensions available on the Magento Market.

Magento security - Only Patch 2.3.5-p2

On Tuesday, July 28, Magento 2.4.0 will be released with General Availability. This release will not only include important updates for security, quality, and platform technologies, along with a number of new capabilities, but also contains the latest security patch -  2.3.5-p2 which provides developers with another update strategy option.

• Option to install time-sensitive security fix without applying hundreds of functional fixes

• A security-only patch to fix the vulnerabilities identified in the previous quarterly release, Magento 2.3.5-p1.

• Includes the hotfixes applied to Magento 2.3.5

Highlight

Substantial security enhancements

Magento 2.4.0 includes over 30 security fixes and platform security improvements, which help close remote code execution (RCE) and cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Besides, the new version introduces the following upgrades:

• The Magento admin area now enables two-factor authentication by default. The feature cannot be disabled. 

• The system enables the template filter strict mode for Magento components to eliminate RCE.

• To eliminate arbitrary JavaScript execution, Magento disable data rendering for UI data providers.

• Content Security Policy improvements include the whitelisting of inline style and script tags in .phtml templates.

Platform upgrades

• PHP 7.4 – 7.1 and 7.2 has been deprecated

• PHPUnit 9.x – 6.5 has been deprecated

• Elasticsearch 7.x

• MySQL 8.0;

• MySQL catalog search engine has been replaced with Elasticsearch

• MariaDB 10.4 – 10.0 and 10.1 are no longer supported

• Zend Framework dependencies are now a part of the Laminas project

• The Signifyd fraud protection code has been removed from the core

• The core Braintree module is no longer there as well.

Infrastructure improvements

This release contains enhancements to core quality, which improve the quality of the Framework and these modules: Customer Account, Catalog, CMS, Import, Cart and Checkout, and B2B.:

• No third-party payment methods in the core: Authorize.Net, eWay, CyberSource, and Worldpay has been removed

• Support for partial-word search for Elasticsearch 

• PayPal JavaScript SDK now contains the PayPal Express Checkout integration

• Web Set Up Wizard is no longer available – use the command line instead;

• Better updates with the Composer plugin.

Performance improvements

• Customer data section invalidation logic has been revamped, addressing a known issue with local storage;

• Redis performance optimizations: smaller network data transfers, less CPU cycles consumption; more efficient race conditions for write operations;

• Improved caching for SQL queries: a single SQL query to the inventory_stock_sales_channel (as well as inventory_stock) table is used instead of 16;

• Improvement of up to 25-30% to Quick Order add-to-cart performance.

Adobe Stock Integration v2.0

Magento 2.4 provides the ability to license stock image previews right from the Media Gallery, simplifying the initial procedure. Merchants can now find any Adobe Stock preview image in the Media Gallery, which reduces the number of steps required to license stock preview image.

New Media Gallery

Media Gallery introduces a completely new, searchable interface where you can search, filter and organize images up to 30 times faster than previous Magento versions. Therefore, sellers can use this tool to evaluate the use of storefront images easily

Inventory Management

Magento 2.4.0 enhances the Inventory Management functionality with in-store pickup and bundle product support.

GraphQL

Magento 2 GraphQL is a data query language to offer an alternative to REST and SOAP web APIs for frontend development.

• pickupLocations query supports the Inventory In-store pickup feature

• categories query returns a list of categories that match a specified filter. This query differs from the categoryList query in that it supports pagination.

• reorderItems mutation allows a logged-in user to add all the products from a previous order into their cart.

PWA Studio

Magento 2.4.0 supports PWA Studio 6.0.0 and 6.0.1.

Magento Functional Testing Framework (MFTF)

MFTF v3.0.0 includes these new features and includes support for PHP 7.4 and PHPUnit 9:

• MFTF helpers, which can create custom actions outside of the test framework

• schema updates for test entities

• sub-folders in test modules

• nested assertion syntax

• static check that checks and reports references to deprecated test entities

Vendor-developed extension enhancements

This release includes these enhancements:

• Customer attribute values that are captured by any input type (for example, dropdown, multi-select) are now correctly synced as data fields.

• Cart insight data is now sent for all active quotes, even if they contain no items. This allows merchants to exit contacts from a program if they empty their cart.

• Merchants can now sync website name, store name, and store view name by individual data fields.

• Wishlist, Review, and Order syncs now look up the transactional data sync limit once only.

• Logging output from the Client class has been improved and is now consistent across all methods in the API wrapper.

• Configurable products now have a stock figure that is the sum of their child products.

• A new plugin detects stock updates that are performed by third-party code (outside the Magento Admin).

New APIs

There are also rumors that Magento 2.4 will introduce new APIs, opening a 2.4 development branch in the Magento2 project repository. Therefore, everyone will have access to the Magento Community. In addition, community pull requests will be redirected to the new branch. It opens up new possibilities for community members to influence each new Magento release.

Surely you are looking forward to this latest version of Magento. We will keep updating this post when I overhear the developers.

Till then, stay tuned, stay updated.

 We would also like to know what do you think about the upcoming Magento2.4 release in the Comments section below. Thank you!