Magento Developer Paradise on Twitter

watch the #magedev hashtag on Twitter for info about Magento Developer Paradise.

Also, more information on Magento's blog: Developer Paradise Kick-OFF

List of 40 free Magento themes

Check out the list: 40 Brilliant Free Magento Themes 2010 Edition

URLs in Magento

2 simple rules to keep in mind when insert a link or an image in a Magento:
- getBaseUrl()
-getSkinUrl()



Next, when you create a link it's easy just to say:
.... href="http://www.blogger.com/customer/account"
instead you should use: ... href="<?php $this->getBaseUrl(); ?>customer/account" ...

For images:
img src="/skin/frontend/default/SKIN_NAME/images/rss.png"
instead you should use: img src="<?php $this->getSkinUrl('images/rss.png');?>" ...

Magento installation - login problems on localhost

If anyone is trying to install Magento on localhost, instead of using the url: http://locahost/magentoStore (or similar) use http://127.0.0.1/magentoStore (127.0.0.1 instead of localhost) Forum thread related to magento installation localhost login Works for Firefox and IE, not working on Safari though...

Magecamp

Starting tomorrow I'll be attending Mage::Camp... I'll have to register first for my VIP pass, hope that does not take long...

My agenda includes the Keynote speech from Varien (Roy Rubin), Magento Enterprise Edition and I'll see maybe some Internet World sessions...

Magento Enterprise Edition is a platform with great potential to cover the needs of a medium/large e-tail company... I have in mind a lot of eCommerce companies in Romania that would benefit from that, lower TCO, better change management and more features for their front end ...

Also, offline retailers could benefit from promoting at least their products in an online environment, attracting new customers and so on...

I'd like to see Mobexpert, which now uses oscommerce based solution just for a catalog... or Bricostore, Praktiker, and so on using a solution that can offer lots of functionalities for getting the most out of their promotions, bundles, cross-selling, up-selling, etc...

I'll post some more opinions during tomorrow... So stay tuned...

Magento 1.2.0.1 - small fixes from 1.2

After announcing the release of Magento 1.2, version 1.2.0.1 was already announced one day later (30 december)... Release notes for version 1.2.0.1:

• Fixed checking customer ID in download controller
• Fixed “Incorrect table name…” SQL error during upgrade on some MySQL versions

In Magento 1.2 the highlights were:

• Added downlodable product type
• Implemented fulltext search
• Added layered navigation to search results
• Added option to disable Google checkout for selected products
• Added fixed amount product taxes
• Upgraded ZF library to version 1.7.2

Zend Framework Quickstart - MySQL version

As you might noticed, Magento platform is built on top of Zend Framework. Recently released 1.2 version of Magento eCommerce Platform includes Zend Framework 1.7.2. Zend Framework Quickstart is a good place to start getting an idea about using ZF to build applications. I wrote earlier about installing Magento from svn. The next steps include creating a custom module (todo list, a guestbook something simple for an introduction in creating a custom module for Magento) and connecting Magento with 3rd party applications. I have the following structure on my laptop that I use for development: htdocs is in

C:\web\Apache2.2\htdocs

Zend Framework library:

C:\web\Apache2.2\htdocs\ZendFramework-1.7.2\library

and I've set in php.ini:

include_path = ".;c:\php\includes;C:\web\Apache2.2\htdocs\ZendFramework-1.7.2\library"

1. Create a folder and unzip Quickstart sample application in that folder:

C:\web\Apache2.2\htdocs\zfquickstart #in my case

2. Setup application paths Because you will not build a single application with ZF I don't see a good idea in including ZF within each application (that library folder in sample application folder). I keep it outside in htdocs and I've setup in php.ini include_path so I won't need to override include_path using set_include_path... So, if you want to change include_path in your php.ini you can do that. Or you can change index.php:

#set_include_path(APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library' . PATH_SEPARATOR .get_include_path());
set_include_path('C:/web/Apache2.2/htdocs/ZendFramework-1.7.2/library'.PATH_SEPARATOR . get_include_path());

So start your browser and go to: http://localhost/zfquickstart/public/ You will see a success message from IndexController:

Hello, from the Zend Framework MVC!
I am the index controllers's view script.

View file is application/scripts/index/index.phtml Another thing that we need to fix is the base url, because css file for example is included as /css/global.css and we are in /zfquickstart/public/ and the correct path should be /zfquickstart/public/css/global.css There are many ways to solve that, using Zend_Router and so on... In bootstrap.php find:

$frontController->setControllerDirectory(APPLICATION_PATH . '/controllers');
#add this (you can create a piece of code to extract this from url):
$frontController->setBaseUrl('/zfquickstart/public');
#also find:
$view = Zend_Layout::getMvcInstance()->getView();
$view->doctype('XHTML1_STRICT');
#and add this line
$view->baseUrl = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->getBaseUrl();

and in layouts/scripts/layout.phtml:

headLink()->appendStylesheet($this->baseUrl.'/css/global.css') ?>

And now you have a nice css added to your layout. Now open public/.htaccess and replace:

RewriteRule ^.*$ /index.php [NC,L]
#with
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]

3. Setting up database for Zend Framework QuickStart application - MySQL version Create database and grant access:

create database zfquickstart;
grant all on zfquickstart.* to 'zfquickstart'@'localhost' identified by 'zfquickstart';
flush privileges;

schema.mysql.sql:

CREATE TABLE `zfquickstart`.`guestbook`(
`id` INT (8) UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`email` VARCHAR (50),
`comment` TEXT,
`created` DATETIME,
PRIMARY KEY(`id`)
) TYPE = MyISAM;

data.mysql.sql

INSERT INTO guestbook (email, comment, created) VALUES
('email.email@zendfoo.com', 'Hello! Hope you enjoy this sample zf application!', NOW());
INSERT INTO guestbook (email, comment, created) VALUES
('foo@bar.com', 'Baz baz baz, baz baz Baz baz baz - baz baz baz.', NOW());

You can run the above sql with phpmyadmin/some mysql gui... or you can create a version for load.mysql.php in scripts folder to load this sql intro database... Now, setting up config. In application/config/app.ini, add this section:

[development]
database.adapter       = "PDO_MYSQL"
database.params.host   = "localhost"
database.params.username   = "zfquickstart"
database.params.password   = "zfquickstart"
database.params.dbname = "zfquickstart"

Note: in bootstrap.php the environment is development:

defined('APPLICATION_ENVIRONMENT')
 or define('APPLICATION_ENVIRONMENT', 'development');

That's it for now... Next episode: Creating a todo list application with Zend Framework

Magento 1.2 Alpha is available on SVN

Magento just published on twitter and their blog the Magento 1.2 alpha availability on SVN. List of changes in Magento 1.2 is also available. Fixed stuff regarding i18n and layout, calculations, taxes and so on... Also ZF is upgraded to 1.7.2... A new feature is: downloadable products (a sneak peak was published a few days ago on Magento's blog: Sneak Peek: Downloadable Products in Magento 1.2); another feature is the fulltext search... Being an alpha version we will see more changes in the near future... I eagerly expect fixes in documentation, wiki urls and so on, because it looks totally unprofessional to see recommended articles on Wiki linked to pages that do not exist (eg: lightbox integration article - now is features but the page is empty in wiki), incomplete documentation and so on... Happy Holidays!

Magento introduction

I followed Magento progress from the beginning. I decided to write a series of tutorials referring for the first chapter to importing and connecting Magento to other systems... Magento API allows interaction through SOAP and XML RPC protocols. Most entities covered, so you can use the API to import/export Customers, Products, Invoices and so on... If you have an ERP system already with your products defined there and you want to expose some of them to web and sell them online (e-commerce website), well, that's what you need. Magento API is permission based, so you need to define users and roles... Also keys for accessing the web service. The authentication part looks like this:

$proxy = new SoapClient('http://mymagento.localhost/api/soap/?wsdl');
$sessionId = $proxy->login('api-user', 'your-api-key-here');

First we talk about this autentication part and then we shall import and export some products, customers maybe interaction with an open source CRM like vTiger and Sugar CRM.