Magento is a huge e-commerce platform built with PHP. It has over 1.5 million downloads and 2,000 extensions. While it has many features out of the box and is easy to use, developers may find it lacks speed, has poor documentation, and uses the EAV data model which some developers dislike. The document then provides tips for developers on how to extend Magento's core functionality using events, cron jobs, models, controllers and more.

1. Magento ++
a gentle introduction to e­commerce and PHP
Alessandro Nadalin
May, 13th 2010

2. Bio
✔
php developer
✔
SEO consultant
✔
OSS enthusiast
✔
GrUSP member
✔
Joomla! Bug Squad
member
✔
tweet­addicted

3. Magento
Huge e-commerce platform
php e­commerce platform
2k extensions Quick setup & start
1.5M downloads

4. What's behind Magento?
22,5M
capital
injection th
on March 15

5. The big question mark

6. The big question mark

7. What's behind Magento? (2)
possibility to directly work with ZF API
ZF components like Zend_Lucene always available
part of Magento's core is enterprise­php­compliant

8. Love it
E­commerce platform
✔
ready and quite easy to use
✔
lots of native features
✔
VAT management
✔
shipping management
✔
multiples store management
✔
price management
Built­in stuff is Magic

9. Hate it
NO
CMS

10. Hate it
NO
SPEED
r

11. Hate it
POOR
DOC

12. Hate it
EAV
Yes, someone hates it

13. Love it
Magic for MASSES

14. Hate it
Less magic for DEVS

15. Let's go developers, let's go!
Let's see what we
got
and later
Let's extend it

16. Extend the core
Setup the override in your module's config.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<global>
<blocks>
<catalog>
<rewrite>
<breadcrumbs>Module_Block_Breadcrumbs</breadcrumbs>
</rewrite>
</catalog>
</blocks>
</global>
</config>
Now you're able to define new breadcrumbs behaviour in
app/local/Your_Company_Namespace/Module/Block/Breadcrumbs.php

17. Events
Find out the events that Magento triggers:
cd app/code/core
grep ­r "dispatchEvent" . > /local/file/path.txt
Trigger your own event:
Mage::dispatchEvent('event_to_trigger',
array('myObject' => $this_module­>domainObject));

18. CronStuff
Setup Magento's routine cronjob:
Crontab ­e
// here comes VIM
* * * * * path/to/php/binaries /path/to/magento/cron.php
Trigger a cronjob in your module config.xml to run a model method:
<jobs>
<mymodule_apply_all>
<schedule>
<cron_expr>0,30 * * * *</cron_expr>
</schedule>
<run>
<model>mymodule/modelName::modelMethod</model>
</run>
</mymodule_apply_all>
</jobs>

19. MVC and .phtml
Magento implements MVC pattern: cool.
For the view it doesn't directly inject variables into templates.
The way to retrieve stuff into templates is to invoke them from a
model:
$news = Mage::getModel('news/news')­>load(3);
echo $news­>getTitle();
Templates are PHTML files which mix PHP and HTML ( so business
logic and rapresentation )

20. XML configurations
XML plays a dominant role in Magento runtime actions
They configure modules, layouts and routes
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
<default>
</default>
<news_index_index>
<reference name="content">
<block type="authors/authors" name="authors"
template="authors/authors.phtml" />
</reference>
</news_index_index>
</layout>

21. Controllers
Controllers usually derive their methods from XML configurations.
The news module, using news controller, running show action will
be characterized with this layout's XML:
<news_news_show>
<reference name="content">
<block type="news/single_news" name="news"
template="news/single_news.phtml" />
</reference>
</news_news_show>
and a showAction method in the NewsController.php
public function showAction()
{
...do stuff...
$this­>loadLayout();
$this­>renderLayout();
}

22. Models
Widely­used stuff
// loads any record of the model
Collection $products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
­>getCollection()
// loads the row with id = ?
Single row $products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
­>load(?)
// loads rows with is_active column value = 1
Filter $products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
­>getCollection()­
>addAttributeToFilter('is_active', 1)
Select // loads only the id column of the rows
$products = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')
­>getCollection()­>addAttributeToSelect('id')
Switch to ZF API $products_with_zf_api = $products­>getSelect()

23. Blocks
Same as symfony's partials
$this­>getLayout()­>createBlock('module/template')
­>setData('key', $value)
­>setTemplate('myModule/myBlock.phtml')­>toHtml();
Can reuse variables set in the controller
// Controller
Mage::register('key', $value);
// In any block
$key = Mage::registry('key');

24. Unit tests
Just install PHPUnit ( or what you prefer ), and include in your
tests the whole Magento application
// PHPUnit installed from PEAR
require_once 'PHPUnit/Framework.php';
// require Magento application
require_once '/var/www/magento/app/Mage.php';
// dummy, do we really need to test core classes and
// methods?
public function testGetSiteUrl (){
$this­>assertEquals(Mage::getUrl(), 'www.mydomain.com');
}

25. Active bloggers
http://www.odino.org/development/content­management­systems/ma
http://alanstorm.com/
http://activecodeline.com/
http://inchoo.net/blog/
http://snippi.net/

26. Question­time
Alessandro Nadalin
alessandro.nadalin@gmail.com
www.odino.org
http://twitter.com/_odino_
http://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandronadalin

27. Photocredits
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronvandike/3221087856/
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http://www.icondrawer.com/free.php
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreanna/2812118063/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/chernobylbob/4390576988/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/red_jelly/298644360/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgoulao/393046424/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/98469445@N00/327471676/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/twose/887903401/
✔
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tochis/1169807846/