Magento - How to switch Base URLs without modifying the Database

As Magento keeps its base URL in database, there is no easy way of accessing the same database from two different URLs (dev/ staging) or moving the same database to staging environment from development without updating the core_config_data table.

After fiddling around with Magento core, I found that getBaseUrl() is responsible of retrieving base URL. So If we could override getBaseUrl() method to get the base URL from dev or staging environments without depending on the database, then we could keep database records with live settings.

Below code will explain how I achieved this task and the code itself is explainable.

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <config>
        <modules>
          <my_configurator>
            <active>true</active>
            <codePool>local</codePool>
          </my_configurator>
        </modules>
    </config>
  <?xml version="1.0"?>
  <config>
    <global>
      <models>
        <core>
          <rewrite>
            <store>My_Configurator_Model_Store</store>
            </rewrite>
          </core>
        </models>
      </global>
    </config>
    <?php
        class My_Configurator_Model_Store extends Mage_Core_Model_Store
        {
            public function getBaseUrl($type=self::URL_TYPE_LINK, $secure=null)
            {
                $url = parent::getBaseUrl($type, $secure);
                //domain from the DB
                $host = parse_url($url, PHP_URL_HOST);
                return str_replace('://'.$host.'/', '://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].'/', $url);
            }
        }

Note: Make sure you disable this extension from production server as we want to run getBaseUrl() method from the Core.

Happy Coding..

###Comments

jennychalek

This is making me pull my hair out. I used this exact code and even though my IDE recognizes that the class has been successfully overriden, magento itself does not seem to know or care - it never calls the override class, just the original. Is there some sort of config setting I'm missing? Any other ideas what could cause this? Grasping at straws at this point.

Thilanga Pitigala

@jennychalek Did you enable the extension? Can you see it under Admin->System->Configuration->Advanced?

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