Not able to access Customer Session via custom module in Magento 2

Question

I'm not able to access the customer session in my custom module. However, when I'm navigating my custom action to salesrep/index/account I'm able to get the customer session. But when I'm navigating my custom module via category click not able to access it.

Here is my code. Controller Code

<?php
namespace ABCSolutions\Customer\Controller\Index;
use Magento\Framework\App\Action\Context;
use Magento\Framework\App\Config\ScopeConfigInterface;
use Magento\Framework\App\ResponseInterface;
use Magento\Framework\View\Result\PageFactory;
use Psr\Log\LoggerInterface as Logger;
class Accounts extends \Magento\Framework\App\Action\Action
{
/**
 * @var PageFactory
 */
protected $resultPageFactory;

/**
 * Logger.
 *
 * @var Logger
 */
protected $logger;

/**
 * Core store config
 * @var ScopeConfigInterface
 */
protected $_scopeConfig;

/**
 * @param Context $context
 * @param PageFactory $pageFactory
 * @param ScopeConfigInterface $scopeConfigInterface
 * @param Logger $loggerInterface
 */
public function __construct(
    Context $context,
    PageFactory $pageFactory,
    ScopeConfigInterface $scopeConfigInterface,
    Logger $loggerInterface,
){
    $this-&gt;resultPageFactory = $pageFactory;
    $this-&gt;_scopeConfig = $scopeConfigInterface;
    $this-&gt;logger = $loggerInterface;
    parent::__construct($context);
}

/**
 * @return ResponseInterface|\Magento\Framework\Controller\ResultInterface|\Magento\Framework\View\Result\Page
 */
public function execute()
{
    $page = $this-&gt;resultPageFactory-&gt;create();
    $page-&gt;getConfig()-&gt;getTitle()-&gt;set(__('Customers'));
    return  $page;
}



}

Block Code:

<?php
namespace ABCSolutions\Customer\Block;
use Magento\Framework\View\Element\Template;
use Magento\Framework\View\Element\Template\Context;
use Magento\Customer\Model\Session as CustomerSession;
class Accounts extends Template
{

    /**
     * @var CustomerSession
     */
    protected $customerSession; 

    /**
     * @param Context $context
     * @param CustomerSession $customerSession
     */
    public function __construct(
        Context $context,
        CustomerSession $customerSession
    ){
        $this-&gt;customerSession = $customerSession;
        parent::__construct($context);
    }
    public function getCustomerId()
    {
        if ($this-&gt;customerSession-&gt;isLoggedIn()) {
            return $this-&gt;customerSession-&gt;getCustomer()-&gt;getId();
        }
        return 0;
    }
    }

Layout code

<referenceContainer name="content">
            <block class="ABCSolutions\Customer\Block\Accounts" name="sales_rep_accounts" template="ABCSolutions_Customer::accounts.phtml" cacheable="false" />
        </referenceContainer>

Phtml code:

<?php /** @var $block ABCSolutions\Customer\Block\Accounts */ ?>
    $customerId = $block->getCustomerId();

Static Block:

{{block class="ABCSolutions\Customer\Block\Accounts" template="ABCSolutions_Customer::accounts.phtml"}}

And the Category: For this category there are no products, So when we click on this the custom module will show.

In frontend website menu.

Any help on this?

Answer 1

It is not recommended to get customer session in places which can be cached. Since the page you are working with is a cms page, it would be cached and once it's cached the cache server (fastly or varnish)/ magento (magento's build-in cache) will directly serve the page's cached html without going into your block to get session values. At best, it would show stale or no values and at worst it may show data of previous customer as well.

The way to do it would be populate your data in customer section, retrieve it on page load the populate it on the page. You can read up more about customer sections in this post - Magento 2: how do customer sections / sections.xml work?

Answer 2

Category page will always be cached. Also, block directives in the CMS does not provide as many options as layout block. You cannot disable cache inside a CMS block. If you want to show dynamic content for each customer on category page then create a custom layout handle which disables cache conditionally for specific category and insert it to the current layout using an observer.

Refer below code

1. Create a custom layout handle

app/code/ABCSolutions/Customer/view/frontend/layout/catalog_category_view_customers.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<page xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:View/Layout/etc/page_configuration.xsd">
    <body>
        <referenceContainer name="content">
            <block class="ABCSolutions\Customer\Block\Accounts" name="sales_rep_accounts" template="ABCSolutions_Customer::accounts.phtml" cacheable="false" />
        </referenceContainer>
    </body>
</page>

2. Declare a custom observer for event load_layout_before

app/code/ABCSolutions/Customer/etc/frontend/events.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:Event/etc/events.xsd">
    <event name="layout_load_before">
        <observer name="abc_solutions_addcustomershandle"
                  instance="ABCSolutions\Customer\Observer\AddCustomersHandle" />
    </event>
</config>

3. Add custom handle to the category layout using event

app/code/ABCSolutions/Customer/Observer/AddCustomersHandle.php

<?php
namespace ABCSolutions\Customer\Observer;
use Magento\Framework\Event\Observer as EventObserver;
use Magento\Framework\Event\ObserverInterface;
use Magento\Framework\Registry;
/**

AddCustomersHandle

/
class AddCustomersHandle implements ObserverInterface
{

    /*
     * @var Registry
     */
    private $registry;
/**
 * @param Registry $registry
 */
public function __construct(Registry $registry)
{
    $this-&gt;registry = $registry;
}

/**
 * @param EventObserver $observer
 */
public function execute(EventObserver $observer)
{
    $action = $observer-&gt;getData('full_action_name');
    if ($action != 'catalog_category_view')
        return $this;

    $category = $this-&gt;registry-&gt;registry('current_category');
    if (!$category)
        return $this;

    if ($category-&gt;getName() == 'Customers') { // add your conditions
        $layout = $observer-&gt;getData('layout');
        $layout-&gt;getUpdate()-&gt;addHandle('catalog_category_view_customers');
   }

    return $this;
}

}