Book Image

Practical Module development for Prestashop 8

By : Louis AUTHIE
Book Image

Practical Module development for Prestashop 8

By: Louis AUTHIE

Overview of this book

After version 1.7, PrestaShop underwent a host of changes, including migration to a Symfony-based system from an outdated legacy code. This migration brought about significant changes for developers, from routine maintenance to module development. Practical Module Development for PrestaShop 8 is curated to help you explore the system architecture, including migrated and non-migrated controllers, with a concise data structure overview. You’ll understand how hooks enable module customization and optimize the CMS. Through the creation of seven modules, you’ll learn about the structure of modules, hook registration, the creation of front-office controllers, and Symfony back-office controllers. By using Doctrine entities, services, CQRS, grids, and forms, you’ll be guided through the creation of standard, payment and carrier modules. Additionally, you'll customize and override themes to achieve your desired e-commerce store look. By the end of this book, you’ll be well equipped to provide modern solutions with PrestaShop that meet client requirements.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Understanding How PrestaShop is Structured and How It Works
8
Part 2 – How to Create Your Own Modules
16
Part 3 – Customizing Your Theme
Appendix – Module Upgrade, The Hooks Discovery Tool, and Multi-Store Functions

Understanding what a theme is and its structure

First, you have to know what a theme represents. It is a folder located in the /themes/ directory, and it contains all the necessary elements and a specified structure to provide a graphical appearance to the FO of PrestaShop.

If you are familiar with WordPress, you should already know about themes; they are the exact equivalent of PrestaShop themes. Even if you can have multiple themes stored in your /themes/ folder, only one can be activated at a time per shop. You always must have one theme activated.

If your website is multistore, you must have one theme activated per shop. PrestaShop stores the active theme name in the Shop ObjectModel class; you can verify that if you check the /classes/shop/Shop.php file, where you should note the presence of a variable called $theme_name. It’s a string containing the theme name that corresponds to the folder name of the theme activated.

The theme is retrieved via the Shop object...