Hole-Punching Extendware Primary Cache in Magento

There is no way to create a placeholder in Enterprise Edition without having a module to contain the cache.xml which in turn is home to the placeholder definition. So if you need to have a custom hole in the full page cache, you will need to create a module to define it.

The sidebar cart block which is built-in does have a placeholder out of the box. That placeholder tags it's cached contents based on the user session. The main content of the page will load from the cache having been warmed from other users, it is only this "hole" in it which has to be filled and generated on a per-user basis. You should also note that when the user's cart contents change, this hole's contents will be re-generated and cached.

Note, the above is on the assumption that it is indeed the Enterprise Edition FPC and hole-punching you are referring to, not something like Varnish. If you are using Varnish (with a proper configuration), it will not serve pages from the cache on the first visit to Magento. This is because on the first visit the user's request must be passed through to Magento so that the application can generate a session for them.

Challenge

Your biggest hurdle here is that your static block does not hole punch by default, but widgets will hole-punch automatically. So your goal should be to output all 3 widget rotators without the use of a static block.

So, then, my suggestion is that you get rid of the static block approach and instead create block reference areas to target with your widget. Classy Llama has a list of default regions available on their blog, referenced here:

Breadcrumbs

Left Column

Main Content Area

My Cart Extra Actions

Navigation Bar

Page Bottom

Page Footer

Page Header

Page Top

Right Column

Store Language

How to do it:

Creating a block reference is easy:

Define the block in layout XML:

<default>
    <reference name="content">
        <block type="core/text_list" name="some_block_name" as="some.block.name" translate="label">
            <label>Widget Rotator Target Region</label>
        </block>
    </reference>
</default>

And then you'll need to echo it from your template to force it and all dynamically inserted widget blocks to render:

#file: 1column.html
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('some_block_name'); ?>

Then, it should show up in your widget list:

This should output in your template now when FPC is enabled wrapped in hole punch comments.

Cheers!

Image and bullet content sourced from:

http://www.classyllama.com/blog/widgets-magento-enteprise