March 28, 2011 | in Magento Tutorials
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Still searching a best way to intergrate your magento with wordpress, you can have it done in a few small steps, no more headache. Try Fishpig’s Magento/WordPresss Integration Extension, and [...]
March 1, 2011 | in Magento Step by Step
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In the first ORM article we told you there were two kinds of Models in Magento. Regular, or "simple" Models, and Entity Attribute Value (or EAV) Models. We also told you this was a bit of a fib. Here's where we come clean.
ALL Magento Models inherit from the Mage_Core_Model_Abstract / Varien_Object chain. What makes something either a simple Model or an EAV Model is its Model Resource. While all resources extend the base Mage_Core_Model_Resource_Abstract class, simple Models have a resource that inherits from Mage_Core_Model_Mysql4_Abstract, and EAV Models have a resource that inherits from Mage_Eav_Model_Entity_Abstract
If you think about it, this makes sense. As the end-programmer-user of the system you want a set of methods you can use to talk to and manipulate your Models. You don't care what the back-end storage looks like, you just want to get properties and invoke methods that trigger business rules.
February 24, 2011 | in Magento Step by Step
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On any fast paced software development project, the task of keeping the development and production databases in sync become a sticky wicket. Magento offers a system to create versioned resource migration scripts that can help your team deal with this often contentious part of the development process.
In the ORM article we created a model for a weblog post. At the time, we ran our CREATE TABLE statements directly against the database. This time, we'll create a Setup Resource for our module that will create the table for us. We'll also create an upgrade script for our module that will update an already installed module. The steps we'll need to take are
February 24, 2011 | in Magento Step by Step
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The implementation of a "Models Tier" is a huge part of any MVC framework. It represents the data of your application, and most applications are useless without data. Magento Models play an even bigger role, as they typically contain the "Business Logic" that's often relegated to the Controller or Helper methods in other PHP MVC frameworks.
If the definition of MVC is somewhat fuzzy, the definition of a Model is even fuzzier. Prior to the wide adoption of the MVC pattern by PHP developers, data access was usually raw SQL statements and/or a SQL abstraction layer. Developers would write queries and not think too much about what objects they were modeling.
In this day and age, raw SQL is mostly frowned upon, but many PHP frameworks are still SQL centric. Models will be objects that provide some layer of abstraction, but behind the scenes developers are still writing SQL and/or calling SQL like abstraction methods to read and write-down their data.
Other frameworks eschew SQL and take the Object Relational Mapping (ORM) approach. Here, a developer is dealing strictly with Objects. Properties are set, and when a save method is called on the Object, the data is automatically written to the database. Some ORMs will attempt to divine object properties from the database, others require the user to specify them in some way, (usually in an abstract data language such as YAML). One of the most famous and popular implementations of this approach is ActiveRecord.
This definition of ORM should suffice for now, but like everything Computer Science these days, the strict definition of ORM has blurred over the years. It's beyond the scope of this article to settle that dispute, but suffice it say we're generalizing a bit.
It should be no surprise that Magento takes the ORM approach. While the Zend Framework SQL abstractions are available, most of your data access will be via the built in Magento Models, and Models you build yourself. It should also come as no surprise that Magento has a highly flexible, highly abstract, concept of what a Model is.
February 20, 2011 | in Magento Step by Step
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The config is the beating heart of the Magento System. It describes, in whole, almost any module, model, class, template, etc. than you'll need to access. It's a level of abstraction that most PHP developers aren't used to working with, and while it adds development time in the form of confusion and head scratching, it also allows you an unprecedented amount of flexibility as far as overriding default system behaviors go.
To start with, we're going to create a Magento module that will let us view the system config in our web browser. Follow along by copying and pasting the code below, it's worth going through on your own as a way to start getting comfortable with things you'll be doing while working with Magento, as well as learning key terminology.
November 26, 2010 | in Magento Tutorials
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If your magento already have iphone theme in default folder but your site does not use it when you browse your site with an iphone or ipod device just follow [...]
November 9, 2010 | in Magento Knowledge Base
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When designing your Magento Mobile app in the Admin Panel, you have the flexibility to use a preset color palette or create your own to reflect your company’s colors and [...]
November 8, 2010 | in Magento Knowledge Base
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Please use this checklist to make sure you have completed all the necessary tasks before submitting your app to Magento.
Things to do before submitting your app to Magento
Update your [...]
October 27, 2010 | in Magento Knowledge Base
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Applicable to: CEv1.4.1+, EEv1.9+
Magento allows you to easily use a variety of payment gateways and methods in your online store. Many are already integrated into Magento and you can enable [...]
August 10, 2010 | in Magento Knowledge Base
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Magento has a sample data archive available that contains sample products and CMS pages to allow you to explore your new Magento installation without having to create everything from scratch [...]
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