Magento 2.3.4 Release — Features and Functionalities

What’s New in Magento 2.3.4?

Upgrade to Magento 2.3.4 released on January 28, 2020, to benefit from the latest features and enhancements:

• Improved performance and security updates.
• Enhanced functionality for better store management.
• Updated tools to optimize customer experience.

New in Magento 2.3.4

Important Security Enhancements:

1. Over 30 security enhancements address cross-site scripting (XSS) and remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. While no confirmed attacks related to these issues have been reported, certain vulnerabilities could potentially be exploited to access customer information or take over administrator sessions. Fixes for these vulnerabilities will be included in the Magento 2.3.4 release.
2. Eliminated custom layout updates and deprecated layout updates to mitigate Remote Code Execution (RCE) risks. The custom layout text field on CMS Page Edit, Category Edit, and Product Edit pages has been replaced with a selector to create a physical file containing layout updates, enhancing security.
3. Revamped content template features to restrict variables to whitelisted options. This redesign ensures that administrator-defined templates, such as emails, newsletters, and CMS content, cannot include variables or directives that directly invoke PHP functions on objects.

Platform Enhancements:

1. Message queue framework enhancements
2. Improved page caching and session storage
3. Enhanced support for MariaDB 10.2
4. Deprecation of the core integration of the Authorize.net payment method

Performance Enhancements:

1. Elimination of non-cached requests to the server on catalog pages and overhaul of the customer section invalidation mechanism. Additionally, improved logic for banner cache management.
2. Refactoring of PHTML files to enhance support for parsing by the bundling mechanism, which can now detect all dependencies on JavaScript.
3. Introducing a new configuration setting under System Configuration > General > Reports > General Options. This allows merchants to disable Magento Reports either completely or partially. Statistics collection for the Reports module is now disabled by default.

Infrastructure improvements

Magento 2.3.4 release incorporates 250 enhancements aimed at boosting core quality across various modules including Framework, catalog, sales, PayPal, Elasticsearch, import, and CMS. These improvements are designed to elevate performance, reliability, and functionality, ensuring a more robust and efficient platform for e-commerce businesses.

Enhancements in Merchant Tools:

1. Integration with Adobe Stock image galleries allows merchants to seamlessly add high-quality media assets to their website content directly from the Magento Admin. Using the searchable interface within the Magento Media Gallery, merchants can explore, preview, license, and deploy stock images for enhancing their website content.

Enhancements in Inventory Management:

1. Resolved a known performance issue in the shopping cart that previously caused higher-than-expected loads on the database server.
2. Updated the Inventory Reservations CLI command to decrease memory usage while identifying and compensating for missing reservations in large catalogs.
3. Fixed several quality issues related to credit memos, grouped products, source, and stock mass actions.

Improved GraphQL coverage for search, layered navigation, cart functionality

1. Merged guest shopping carts with customer carts for seamless shopping experiences.
2. Customers can now initiate an order on one device and complete it on another.
3. Layered navigation now supports custom filters for enhanced product filtering.
4. Enabled category search by ID, name, and/or URL key for easier navigation.
5. The Product Interface now supports fixed product taxes like WEEE.
6. The cart object has been enhanced to provide information about promotions and applied discounts at both line and cart levels.

Magento users now have the option to install a security-only patch, version 2.3.3.1, designed to protect Magento 2 stores from vulnerabilities identified in the previous major release. Unlike the comprehensive quarterly release Magento 2.3.4, this security-only patch focuses solely on fixing security bugs without including the extensive functional fixes and enhancements. It's important to note that while the security-only patch addresses security vulnerabilities, it does not incorporate additional security enhancements found in the full patch release.

In addition to bundling code for all features and functionalities within the Magento 2.3.4 core release, several projects such as Page Builder, Inventory Management, and Progressive Web Applications (PWA) Studio are also independently released. Each of these projects maintains separate documentation that outlines project-specific release information and bug fixes.

Furthermore, the Magento 2.3.4 release addresses numerous issues within the core code, providing fixes for hundreds of identified issues across various aspects of the platform.

Other Releases:

Magento Open Source 1.9.4.4

Get ready for Magento 2.3.4 and don’t forget to mention your favorite feature in the comment section below. Share these articles with other Magento enthusiasts to keep them updated about the upcoming release!

While you wait , prepare to embrace Magento 2.3.4 and start speculating about the features that might be included in the upcoming Magento 2.3.5 release in April 2020. Stay tuned for more updates!