Configure theme properties

What’s in this topic

The properties of product images used on the storefront are stored in the view.xml configuration file. This topic provides all details about what properties are available and how to configure them.

The properties for the images displayed on the product pages are defined by the gallery widget options. The options of the widget can be configured in the theme view.xml as well. For more details, view the Gallery widget topic.

Configure image properties in view.xml

The conventional location of view.xml for a theme is:

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<theme_dir>/etc/view.xml

For example, here is the view.xml of the Magento Blank theme: app/design/frontend/Magento/blank/etc/view.xml.

In view.xml, image properties are configured in the scope of <images module="Magento_Catalog"> element:

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<media>
    <images module="Magento_Catalog">
    ...
    </images>
</media>

Image properties are configured for each image type defined by the id and type attributes of the <image> element:

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<images module="Magento_Catalog">
   <image id="unique_image_id" type="image_type">
   ...
   </image>
</images>

The following table describes the attributes in detail:

The following picture illustrates how image roles for product images are specified in the Magento Admin:

Image properties are defined by the corresponding elements, for example:

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<images module="Magento_Catalog">
    <image id="unique_image_id" type="image">
        <width>100</width> <!-- Image width in px -->
        <height>100</height> <!-- Image height in px -->
    </image>
</images>

All image properties used in view.xml should be listed in the order shown here to prevent a “This element is not expected.” frontend error. The following table contains the list of all properties which can be configured:

Resize catalog images

Generally, product images are cached while saving the product. However, the magento catalog:images:resize command enables you to resize all images for display on your storefront. Situations where this could be necessary might be:

• After you import products, which might have images of various sizes
• If images were resized or deleted manually from cache

Each image assigned to a product must be resized in accordance with image metadata defined in a module’s view.xml configuration file. After resizing an image, its resized copy is stored in the cache (/pub/media/catalog/product/cache directory). Magento serves storefront images from cache.

Command usage:

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php <magento install dir>/bin/magento catalog:images:resize

This command has no arguments or options. A progress indicator displays while the command runs.

The message Product images resized successfully displays to confirm the command succeeded.

Configure variables in view.xml

The variable properties vars are configured for each module individually, defined by module name.

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<vars module="Magento_Catalog">
    <var name="breakpoints">
        <var name="mobile">
            <var name="conditions">
                <var name="max-width">767px</var>
            </var>
            ...
        </var>
    </var>
    ...
</vars>

Any block that extends AbstractBlock, can fetch variable values with the getVar method:

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$block->getVar($name, $module = null)

Check the following example on getting the breakpoints variable by the Gallery block:

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/**
 * Return breakpoints options
 *
 * @return string
 */
public function getBreakpoints()
{
    return $this->jsonEncoder->encode($this->getVar('breakpoints'));
}

Variables may be used within the scope of modules than the defined one.