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How you could build your Magento extensions without view files

22nd FEB 2011 | Posted by Branko Ajzele in Extensions, Frontend, Magento

The main idea behind this article is something I previously wrote, making your extensions more distributable, less error prone, less depended, less intrusive. Such extensions are then more “safer” to be fetched and installed via Magento Connect. When I say safer I am thinking in terms of your extension not breaking someone live store, etc.

I would dare to say that one of the most annoying and dangerous areas of extension development are the theme view files. For example, imagine an extension that adds some “color switcher” like functionality on the product view page. Read more

Configurable product modification in Magento

22nd FEB 2011 | Posted by Mladen Lotar in Configuration, Extensions, Frontend, Magento, Programming

In this article, I’ll give you extension that will change drop down selection (select field) to radio buttons on configurable products in Magento Community edition.
Read more

How to add an external javascript/css file to Magento?

18th FEB 2011 | Posted by Vedran Subotic in Frontend, Integration, Magento

image by mauricesvay left @flickr

Have you ever had a need for adding external files into your Magento layout?
If you had then you know that you cannot do that from your xml layout files using methods/action:

<action method="addJs">
<action method="addCss">
or
<action method="addItem">

You could do that by hard-coding your “head.phtml” file, but then those external files will be loaded on all Magento pages.
This simple extension will provide you easy access for adding/removing external files such as JavaScript or CSS, libraries from remote servers which you cannot or don’t want to put on your server.
I called it Inchoo_Xternal extension.
Read more

Logging user/customer actions in Magento

18th FEB 2011 | Posted by Branko Ajzele in Magento, Programming

Recently I wrote a Magento extension called ActionLogger, inspired (thematically) by the “Logging of Administrator Actions” feature available in Magento Enterprise. ActionLogger is pretty simple extension, working on pretty simple but powerful concept of Magento controllers predispatch action.

All you need to do is to create event observer/observers for “controller_action_predispatch” event. This event is fired on every controller action call. Read more

Magento PDF invoice with product images extension

17th FEB 2011 | Posted by Mladen Lotar in Extensions, Magento, Orders, Payment, Programming

Hello everyone, short while after I wrote article Add custom attribute to Magento’s PDF invoice I received quite a number of requests for explanation on how to add products images to PDF invoice. As I had some time, I’ve created an extension that will do just that.
Read more

Magento and rel=canonical

16th FEB 2011 | Posted by Toni Anicic in Magento, Marketing, Online Marketing

photo of twins by e³°°° @flickr

A new comment on my old post that explains how rel=canonical element (tag) works gave me inspiration to write another article about rel=canonical. This time, I’ll try to explain why and where rel=canonical is usually necessary in a Magento store.

I’ll leave technical implementation and decision should you use any of the existing extensions or go for custom implementation to you. I’ll just cover the marketing and SEO perspective on the issue. Read more

Create configuration for your Magento extension

15th FEB 2011 | Posted by Mladen Lotar in Configuration, Database, Magento, Programming

Today I’m going to give you and quick HOW-TO for beginners on how to create simple configuration for your extension inside Magento’s configuration section.
If you’re interested, read on:
Read more

Magento code library – Handling files and folders

15th FEB 2011 | Posted by Branko Ajzele in Magento, Programming, Starting up

Among most often custom coding tasks are usually those related to some import/export between Magento and other system. Usually existing store owners when switching from their current shop system to Magento want to transfer all of their products, orders, and most importantly customers.

Most of the time, standard Magento product/customer import/export is not sufficient for the task at hand. Limitations like file size upload and structure of original data require you to do a custom scripts that will handle the job of data transfer. Think of shops with several tens of thousands of orders, customers, products. Read more

Magento Go Platform, sneak peak

14th FEB 2011 | Posted by Branko Ajzele in Magento, News, Starting up

Seems like folks in Magento are rolling fast with their Magento Go Platform. Few minutes ago I stumbled upon a url http://devsite-demo.magento.com which seems to host a development version of Go Platform’s developers site.

~~Although still limited with content, several interesting and bottom line things are already there.~~

Seems like Go Platform will use REST API approach to integrate an OpenSocial gadget in your Magento store. Given that we are talking about the Google’s Open Social, I’m very pleased to see them move in this direction. Meaning most of your development will come down to JavaScript, XML, XHTML, and a few calls to REST API’s. Read more