Building Magento extensions can be a challenging task for several reasons. On one side a developer is required to have a solid understanding of advanced PHP object-oriented knowledge, while on the other side there are numerous Magento-specific patterns and configuration options you need to master. This book will give you enough insight into the structure and concepts, and teach you a few tricks that will help you master Magento more easily. By the end of the book, you should familiarize yourself with configuration files, models, blocks, controllers, event/observers, shipping, and payment methods. All of these should form a solid foundation for your developing modules later.
Chapter 1, An Overview of Magento Extensions, introduces you to the overall Magento directory structure, digging all the way down to the individual module structure. Important concepts such as Block, Model, Helper, and controller classes together with configuration files are introduced and explained.
Chapter 2, Building the Extension – Maximum Order Amount, guides you through your first real-world module. Using the event/observer system, you build a simple but powerful module for limiting the amount of maximum purchase.
Chapter 3, Building the Extension – Logger, introduces you to the practical usage of models and installation scripts in Magento, together with the use of administration grids for displaying the entity data.
Chapter 4, Building the Extension – Shipping, introduces you to the Magento shipping methods system, showing you a practical example for building your own shipping method.
Chapter 5, Building the Extension – Payment, introduces you to the Magento payment methods system, showing you a practical example for building your own payment method.
Chapter 6, Packaging and Publishing Your Extension, introduces you to the process of packaging your extension for distribution over the Magento Connect extension marketplace.
In order to successfully run all the examples provided in this book, you will need either your own web server or third-party web hosting solution. The Magento Community Edition platform itself comes with a detailed list of system requirements, which you can find at http://www.magentocommerce.com/system-requirements. If you are able to install Magento on your server, you should be able to follow all the guidelines given in the book.
This book is primarily intended for intermediate to advanced PHP developers looking for a way into Magento module development. The existing Magento developers might find certain chapters interesting as well, depending on their previous experience.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "This is basically a .htaccess template file used for creating new stores within subfolders."
A block of code is set as follows:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<Foggyline_HappyHour>
<active>true</active>
<codePool>community</codePool>
</Foggyline_HappyHour>
</modules>
</config>New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "You can confirm that by going under the Magento administration under System | Configuration | Advanced | Advanced | Disable Modules Output."
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