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Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP

By Quentin Zervaas

Want to assert yourself as a cutting edge PHP web developer? Take a practical approach...

Magento 1.3: PHP Developer's Guide

By Jamie Huskisson

Media: Book (Paperback, 240 pages)
ISBN: 1847197426
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Release Date: Feb 12, 2010

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Product Description

Design, develop, and deploy feature-rich Magento online stores with PHP coding

Extend and customize the Magento e-commerce system using PHP code
Set up your own data profile to import or export data in Magento
Build applications that interface with the customer, product, and order data using Magento's Core API
Packed with examples for effective Magento Development

In Detail

Magento is the most powerful e-commerce solution around and has gained popularity in a short period of time. You can create and manage online stores using the extensive suite of powerful tools it offers. However, because of its powerful features, developing with Magento can be easier said than done.

This book will show you how to develop better and do more with the Magento. You will be able to extend and customize modules for the Magento system without editing the core system code. It will show you how to create both basic and advanced functionality modules for your store and help you turn your ideas for extending Magento into reality by building modules from scratch.

This book starts by walking you through the server requirements for installing Magento making sure Magneto's installation and upgrade process can fit into your workflow and suit your hosting environment setup. Then it runs through the architecture behind Magento's system, covering the core file structure and how the template system works. You'll also learn how to build a basic shipping module, payment module, and a brand management module for Magento. As you delve deeper into the book you will learn how to integrate your favorite CMS into Magento for data portability.

By the end of the book you will be able to take your basic knowledge of Magento and turn it into something advanced that will help you develop turn your ideas for extending Magento into reality.

What you will learn from this book

Install and upgrade Magento to get ready for development
Get familiar with the architecture and internal structure of Magento
Learn about the best modules available and what they can do for you out of the box
Build a Shipping module for your Magento store to give users options for receiving their items once they have paid for them
Create a payment method for Magento and the various aspects that go together to complete the payment process
Speed up your module creation process using the Module Creator script
Build a basic brand-management module for Magento to manage brands and display their details
Integrate your favorite CMS into Magento including a walkthrough of integrating Wordpress into Magento
Create, update, delete, and retrieve customer data from within Magento by implementing the customer API
Integrate Magento data into an existing external web application or script using the Magento Core API
Import/export files to retrieve and store information from and to external sources using Excel Spreadsheet or CSV data

Chapter 1: Magento: Developer's Guide

Chapter 2: Installing/Upgrading Magento and Preparing for Development

Chapter 3: Magento's Architecture

Chapter 4: Building a Shipping Module for Magento

Chapter 5: Building a Payment Method for Magento

Chapter 6: Basic Modules to Extend Magento's Functionality

Chapter 7: Fully Featured Module with Administration Panel

Chapter 8: Integration of a Third-Party CMS

Chapter 9: Magento's Core API

Chapter 10: Importing and Exporting Data

Chapter 11: Appendix A - Resources for Further Learning

Approach

This book is a practical tutorial, filled with examples, aimed at people with no experience of programming web sites using the Magento system.

Who this book is written for

If you are a PHP developer who wants to understand the architecture of Magento, learn how to extend the system with PHP code, add new features, and integrate Magento with a third-party CMS, this book is for you.

You are expected to be a confident PHP 5 developer. No experience of Magento development is expected, although you should be familiar with the operation of Magento. No experience of the Zend framework is expected.

Good stuff surrounded by lots of fluff.

I bought this book looking to take the next step in Magento development. I've created a few small modules already and have a pretty good handle on OOP PHP. This book was kind of frustrating to read, it would glaze over the hard parts and explain the easy parts. I don't want to be too hard on the author et. al. as I understand Magento books are a little scarce.

The book walks you through installing Magento. This info is already online, why spend a whole chapter on that? There are several places that either code was left out of the book or something, but some very important lines of code that just seem to be inserted are not explained at all.

Would I buy the book again, yes. It has some good stuff in there and there are some good examples. Is it worth >$30. I don't think so. Like I said, you could easily cut about 1/3 of this book out as it's too basic and explains obvious things.

Submitted 12 Mar 2010

Decent info, but very disappointing overall

I was really excited about this book, finally a book that will actually instruct me on the beast we call Magento. I received the book and dived in as soon as I had some time. I do feel like I have a better understanding of how the files are arranged, the methods used and how to extend functionality. The only problem I have is that none of the code examples work, at least none that I have tried so far. The shipping module is the big one for me. I've installed lots of extensions, yet this one never worked. The author was really great and provided decent support, but in the end it was basically "bummer that it doesn't work for you". Due to what I learned from the book I was able to see the mistakes in the code that goes along with the book, but the fact that the code was wrong in the first place starts to make me wonder about all the other info in the book.

Overall Im frustrated and bummed that this book wasn't what I was hoping that it would be. The reason I gave it two stars instead of one was because I did actually learn something and it was helpful and the author was friendly. Otherwise Im tempted to try to get my money back due to all the mistakes and frustration it provides me with on a consistent basis.

Submitted 8 Mar 2010

It Is What It Claims To Be

The book is a developers guide. If you know PHP well, and want to dive into Magento, then this book will show you how to customize it from a development perspective.... unlike most other books that are simply tutorials on how to use magento. What this book is not, is a way to customize a magento theme. For that, all you really need is a knowledge of xhtml/css. As noted by another review, there are some errors in the book. Not really all that surprised by that, as it seems like almost all generation 1 books these days can't seem to proofread. All in all, the book provides the concepts, which is really the point. Hopefully the errata gets published.

Submitted 14 Feb 2010

If I Could Give This Zero Stars, I Would

This book is hands down the worst programming book I've ever purchased, and I've gone through a lot. Some books are a bit hard or confusing, and that's fine. This book is just broken. Ignoring the fact that it seems like every other sentence has a typo (does anyone proofread anymore?) the code examples simply do NOT work. I had to consult the Magento Community boards to get the FIRST actual bit of code from this book to WORK. Turns out the book omitted an ENTIRE block of XML that was necessary in a config file. By necessary, I mean their example doesn't work without it. Things like that are simply inexcusable. Neither the publisher nor the author provides any level of assistance with their broken book.

Here's my take on what happened here, since there are so few books out there covering Magento, this author rushed one out figuring anyone trying to learn it would probably give it a shot. Definitely worked out to be true in my case! Now I have a $30 waste of space sitting on my book shelf.

Submitted 13 Feb 2010