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ActInformationBar - Shopware Plugin

A Shopware 6 plugin that displays a customizable, time-controlled information bar at the top of your storefront with dynamic messaging capabilities.

Features

• Multiple information bars per sales channel, each with its own schedule
• A bar without a period runs permanently and is superseded by scheduled bars inside their window
• Messages maintainable per sales channel and language
• Dedicated admin pages under Content → Information bar: a list, a detail page per bar and a defaults page
• Time-controlled display with start and end dates, evaluated against a configurable timezone
• Rotating messages with smooth fade transitions (one line per rotation)
• Centered layout that keeps the button in place while the lines change
• Customizable appearance per bar (colors, fonts, padding)
• Colours are applied as CSS custom properties, so theme:compile is no longer needed after a colour change
• Optional call-to-action button
• Full-width or container layout options
• Responsive design
• AJAX request awareness (no display on AJAX calls)
• Accessibility: hidden lines are excluded from screen readers, new-window links are announced as such, and the fade respects reduced-motion preferences
• Bars can be duplicated
• ACL privileges (act_information_bar with viewer/editor/creator/deleter roles)
• Multi-language admin interface (German & English)
• Compatible with Shopware 6.7

Requirements

• Shopware 6.7 or higher
• PHP 8.4 or higher

Installation

Via Composer (recommended)

Manual

1. Download or clone this plugin into your custom/plugins/ directory
2. Install and activate the plugin via CLI:

Updating

Nothing has to be re-entered. On update, all settings that used to live in the plugin configuration (appearance, timing, texts) are copied into the bar itself. The storefront keeps showing the same bar with the same texts, colors and schedule; everything is now maintained under Content → Information bar, and the plugin configuration only shows an info banner.

If a shop overrode one of the plugin's Sass variables ($act-information-bar-*) in its own theme, that override is superseded by the value configured on the bar from 1.5.0 onward. The variables remain in place as fallbacks for empty values.

Configuration

Everything is maintained under Content → Information bar. The plugin configuration (Settings → System → Plugins → Actualize: Time-controlled Information Bar) only shows an info banner; it no longer holds any settings.

1. Go to Admin Panel → Content → Information bar
2. The list shows every bar across all sales channels; use "Add bar" to create a new one or open an existing one
3. Pick the language via the language switch on the detail page to edit that language's texts
4. Edit the fields and save

Each bar belongs to one sales channel (or "All Sales Channels") and can have its own schedule and appearance. A bar without a start and end date runs permanently; a bar with a schedule supersedes the permanent bar of the same sales channel while its window is active and hands display back to it afterwards. Among overlapping scheduled bars, the one with the later start date wins. A bar can be duplicated from the list's context menu; the copy's start and end dates are cleared so it does not immediately compete with the original.

When saving a bar, the detail page warns (without blocking the save) if the end date is not after the start date, or if a start or end date falls on a day when the configured timezone's clock changes.

Configuration Options

Bars

• Name: Internal name shown in the list, not displayed in the storefront
• Active: Enable/disable the bar
• Sales Channel: The sales channel the bar applies to, or "All Sales Channels"
• Start Date / End Date: The bar's schedule, evaluated against the configured timezone (see Defaults below). Leave both empty for permanent display
• Message: The text to display, one line per rotation (plain text - HTML is not rendered)
• Button Text, Button URL, Button Title: Optional call-to-action button; it is only rendered when both text and URL are set
• Full Width: Display bar across full browser width or within container
• Display Duration: How long each message iteration displays (in seconds)
• Text Color, Background Color: Bar colors (hex values)
• Padding Top, Padding Bottom: Padding in pixels
• Font Size: Text size in pixels
• Show Button: Enable/disable the CTA button
• Button Target: Link target (_self, _blank). With _blank the link carries rel="noopener noreferrer" and a visually hidden "opens in a new window" hint for screen readers
• Button Text Color, Button Text Color (Hover): Button text color
• Button Border Color, Button Border Color (Hover): Button border color
• Button Border Width: Border thickness in pixels
• Button Background Color, Button Background Color (Hover): Button background color

Texts are translatable per language: if a language has no text of its own, the plugin falls back to the default language of the sales channel, then to the system default language, and only then to the global record — in that order. An empty message in one language therefore never makes the bar disappear. The message decides: the first record and language with a non-empty message supplies all four texts. Filling in only a button text while leaving the message of that language empty means the whole language is skipped and the button text is never shown. Appearance and schedule are not translatable — they belong to the bar, not to a language.

Defaults

The defaults page (Content → Information bar → Defaults) holds the values that are copied into a bar when it is created — the same appearance fields listed above, plus the timezone. It does not affect existing bars; changing a default only changes what a newly created bar starts out with.

The timezone setting is the shop's timezone for evaluating start and end dates, independent of the sales channel and independent of any individual admin user's profile timezone. If left unset, it falls back to the server timezone (PHP's date.timezone setting, then the TZ environment variable), and only uses UTC if neither yields a valid identifier.

How it works

Display Logic

1. Time Control: Bar displays only within configured date range
2. AJAX Awareness: Automatically hidden during AJAX requests
3. Page Integration: Injected at the top of the page body
4. Extension System: Uses Shopware's extension system for clean integration

Message Rotation

• One line at a time: Each line of the message is shown in turn, looping continuously
• Smooth Transitions: CSS opacity fade between lines, skipped when the visitor prefers reduced motion
• Stable Layout: All lines are rendered stacked in a single grid cell, so the bar keeps the width of the longest line and the button does not move while the lines change
• Responsive Behavior: The button wraps below the message on narrow viewports

Integration Points

• Subscribes to GenericPageLoadedEvent
• Adds extension data to page object
• Template extends base storefront layout
• CSS and JavaScript loaded conditionally

Technical Details

Events Used

• GenericPageLoadedEvent - Injects information bar data into page

Data Storage

• act_information_bar with translations in act_information_bar_translation, one row per bar plus its texts per language
• Appearance and schedule are columns on the bar itself, not system_config

Template Structure

• Extends @Storefront/storefront/base.html.twig
• Includes custom template for bar rendering
• Conditional display based on configuration

JavaScript Features

• Renders all message lines once and only toggles their visibility via CSS classes
• Hidden lines carry aria-hidden so screen readers announce the visible line only
• Continuous loop with configurable display duration

Development

Building/Testing

After making changes:

Debugging

• Check browser console for JavaScript errors
• Verify date settings on the bar
• Test with different message lengths
• Monitor animation performance in DevTools

Usage Examples

The examples list message and button texts together with the appearance values they go with. All of it is maintained on a bar under Content → Information bar.

Simple Announcement

Time-Limited Sale

Maintenance Notice

Multiple Rotating Lines

Each line is shown in turn. The bar reserves the width of the longest line, so the button keeps its position while the lines rotate.

Styling Tips

High Contrast

• Dark backgrounds with white text for maximum visibility
• Use hex colors for precise control
• Test on different devices for readability

Display Duration

• Short lines (1-3 seconds)
• Longer lines (5-10 seconds so they can be read completely)
• Adjust based on message importance

Responsive Design

• Bar automatically adjusts to screen width
• Text remains readable on mobile devices
• Button scales appropriately

Compatibility

• Shopware Version: 6.7
• PHP Version: 8.4+
• Browser Support: All modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)
• Mobile: Fully responsive and touch-friendly
• Theme Compatibility: Works with all Shopware themes

Known Limitations

• Appearance is not translatable. Every language of a bar therefore shares one appearance; only the texts differ. The appearance fields on the detail page are unaffected by the language switch for that reason.
• Messages are plain text; HTML markup is not rendered
• Very long messages may impact performance
• Date/time evaluated against the timezone configured on the defaults page; if unset, it falls back to the server timezone and only uses UTC as a last resort
• A colour change is not instant on a live shop. The bar sits in the storefront's main document cache, not in the separately cached header fragment, and saving a bar does not invalidate it. The new colour appears once the HTTP cache TTL expires, or right away after bin/console cache:pool:clear cache.http. No theme:compile is needed either way — that is the point of serving colours as CSS custom properties.
• Daylight saving transitions need care. On a spring forward day one wall clock hour does not exist (02:00–02:59 in Europe/Berlin), and a start or end time inside it is silently moved forward by an hour. A window spanning exactly that missing hour collapses to zero length and the bar never appears. On an autumn day the same hour exists twice and is ambiguous. The detail page warns at save time when a date falls on such a day, and separately when the end date is not after the start date; both warnings are advisory and saving proceeds. Schedule around a transition by picking a time outside the affected hour.

Support

For issues and feature requests, please use the GitHub issue tracker.

License

This plugin is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Credits

Developed by Actualize

Made with ❤️ for the Shopware Community