Magento 2.4.2 Release Notes: All you need to know in 2024

The Covid 19 pandemic is still ongoing in 2021; however, it should not be too much of an obstacle for Magento developers to bring incredible things to the e-commerce industry. It’s the launch of an excellent version of Magento - version 2.4.2, which is not only a performance and security enhancement of Magento for e-commerce stores, but it also improves other platforms significantly. Undoubtedly, upgrading your e-commerce store to this version will result in better customer experiences for shoppers.

It’s time to dig deeper into Magento 2.4.2. Today’s tutorial will show you everything about Magento 2.4.2 Release. Don’t forget to follow to the end so as not to miss valuable information.

Table of Contents

• Magento 2.4.2 Release Date
• Magento 2.4.2 Releases Highlights
  • Security Enhancements
  • Infrastructure enhancements
  • Platform improvements
  • Performance improvements
  • PWA Studio
  • GraphQL
  • Media Gallery
  • Magento Functional Testing Framework (MFTF)
  • AWS S3 Enhancements
• Magento 2.4.2 Commerce Release Notes
  • GraphQL
  • B2B
  • Page Builder
• The bottom line

Magento 2.4.2 Release Date

Magento 2.4.2 was launched on February 9, 2021.

Good news for all Magento store owners as well as Magento developers, in this release, Magento 2.4.2 version resolves about 290 GitHub issues, contains more than 280 new fixes for core code and over 30 significant security enhancements.

In addition, Magento’s Open Source 2.4.2 release notes detail the security improvements related to the extension to support the Same Site attribute for all cookies. Via this release note, it also clarified the support of Elasticsearch 7.9.x and Redis 6.x.

Above all, the goal of the Magento 2.4.2 release is to deliver powerful enhancements to all Magento store owners to help increase their store conversion rates and deliver a better user experience for customers in the shopping process.

Magento 2.4.2 Releases Highlights

Security Enhancements

The Magento 2.4.2 release includes over 35 security enhancements to close RCE and XSS vulnerabilities. This is considered the most impressive improvement for Magento store owners. Fortunately, although there are no attacks related to these issues, you must install this security update to avoid unwanted risks that male actors can exploit.

Always keep in mind that these issues all require admin access, so it’s better to protect your backend area with 2-factor authentication, IP whitelist, VPN, password strong password as well as a unique administrative address.

Some other security improvements include:

• SameSite attribute supports for all core cookies
• The ability to identify potentially malicious content through messages and an alert will appear
• Fix Core Content Security Policy (CSP) violations

Infrastructure enhancements

Both Magento 2.4.2 Commerce and Open Source versions bring improvements to core quality. They improve the quality of the framework with different functional areas such as:

• Customer Account
• Catalog
• CMS
• OMS
• Import/Export
• Promotions
• Targeting
• Cart and Checkout
• Staging and Preview

Platform improvements

Magento 2.4.2 version supports the following platforms:

• Varnish 6.4 and still compatible with version 6.x.
• Redis 6.x and still compatible with Redis 5.x.
• Elasticsearch 7.9.x and still compatible with 7.9.x
• Composer 2.x and still compatible with Composer 1.x, which is about to expire.

In addition, you should also note that the split database functionality has been deprecated. If you still take advantage of this feature, you need to revert or switch to a single item.

Performance improvements

This release is introduced as a performance enhancement to the API. In addition, the admin response time is also faster. More than that, due to various scalability improvements, Magento 2.4.2 version supports 20 times larger complex categories than before.

PWA Studio

The Magento 2.4.2 release of PWA Studio includes some improvements below:

• Venia supports multiple languages, currencies and stores well.
• It brings improved extensibility to support the code change via extensions.
• Venia’s My Account includes the functionality relating to Wishlist, Saved Payments, Address Book, and Order History.
• Various performance optimizations and bug fixes

GraphQL

Magento 2.4.2 introduced improved GraphQL coverage. Now is the time to take advantage of the following features:

• GraphQL in catalog permissions has the ability to restrict which items are returned for a product query. The shopper’s customer group is used as the basis for this activity.
• Due to the surge of generateCustomerTokenAsAdmin and the enhanced customer audience, it is easier to make remote purchases supported in Magento 2.4.2 than in versions of other platforms.
• Localization support across stores is an important part of Magento 2.4.2, that’s why it’s easier to change language, currency, and shopping cart.
• GraphQL Schema optimizes product data retrieval for configurable products.
• Magento GraphQL supports unions.
• Magento 2.4.2 stopped working with integer object IDs. Currently, the system will rely on the uid properties of the ID type.

ProductInterface and CategoryInterface are improved with the staging attribute. It just got easier to determine if a product is staged. In addition, the system can also show its related campaign information.

Media Gallery

The Media Gallery associated with the role resource is new in Magento version 2.4.2. Besides, it can also provide optimized images in the content.

Building on the first feature, it allows you to limit admin access to the Media Gallery and assign the following roles:

• Upload assets
• Change assets details
• Insert media assets into content
• Delete assets
• Edit folder structure

Web-optimized image rendering enables high-resolution image replacement. While the original image is preserved in the Media Gallery, the image rendering is dynamically generated each time the image is inserted into the content.

Magento Functional Testing Framework (MFTF)

Now Magento 2.4.2 provides Magento Functional Testing Framework version 3.2.1. You can take advantage of fault tolerance in both testings as well as creating test suites along with some minor improvements and bug fixes.

AWS S3 Enhancements

The Magento 2.4.2 release includes advanced support for Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) below:

• Object storage and future scalability.
• Store media files on AWS S3
• Added support for AWS S3 in most modules such as B2B, PageBuilder, and Adobe Stock Integration.

Magento 2.4.2 Commerce Release Notes

The Magento Commerce 2.4.2 release includes the following unique features:

GraphQL

GraphQL enhancements of Magento 2.4.2 Commerce also includes the following features:

• Support for multiple wishlists. GraphQL allows you to create, delete, and rename wish lists. At the same time, you can also move and copy items using innovative new technology.
• Support for RMA. Here customers can request returns in a more user-friendly way. Once the request is accepted, the customer can add a comment or follow it.
• Support for B2B includes companies, company credit and requisition.
  • Companies: You can use GraphQL to add administrators, users, teams, and roles.
  • Company credit: You can view the details of the company’s credit history.
  • Requisition: Magento 2.4.2 version allows using GraphQL to create, update and delete requisition lists as well as update, delete, add, copy, move items there or add required list items to the cart.

B2B

Magento 2.4.2 version includes the latest version of the B2B module - v1.3.1. Its mission is to support online payment for PO along with many bug fixes. With the help of online payment methods, you can complete the former. From a B2B buyer’s perspective, you can choose your preferred payment method for each order. After that, a corresponding prompt will appear during the checkout process. Next, the buyer will be prompted to enter payment details for final order fulfillment once the PO has been approved.

Some further updates of B2B include:

• The system is compatible with third-party payment methods.
• Notice is emailed to the buyer—request payment details for an approved PO.
• Existing payment method templates can be overwritten during the initial checkout, that’s why Magento maintains PCI compliance.
• Support custom email templates.
• An Approved - Pending Payment status for the POs is now ready.
• Magento does not allow customers to add or remove discount codes at the final checkout step, so the total order amount does not change for approved POs. However, the buyer can also change the payment method at the end.

Page Builder

Page Builder content migration and CSS customization were improved in Magento 2.4.2 edition. Thanks to this, you will get the following enhancements:

• Magento offers different content type output per viewport, avoiding the !important directive.
• It’s so easy to move content to Page Builder. Also, it no longer follows the default inline style as before.
• Content types don’t have to be in a row. You can set by column, row, Tabs, Dynamic Blocks, HTML Code, and Blocks there.
• It is not necessary to specify predefined margins and paddings.

For more information about Magento 2.4.2 release notes, you can see the details here.

The bottom line

Those are all the highlights of the Magento 2.4.2 release. Now is the time to take immediate action.

It’s better to upgrade your eCommerce store to this excellent version today. Don’t waste time overthinking; experience this particular version and make the most of the attractive features it offers you before updating to the latest version of Magento - version 2.4.3, which was just released in August 2021.

If you are concerned about the risks of upgrading your store to a new version, consider hiring certified developers to help you upgrade your Magento store without affecting the data and security of your store.

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Thanks a lot for reading!