Branko Ajzele - Getting Started with Magento Extension Development

Branko Ajzele is a professional, certified, and highly experienced software developer, focused on e-commerce-related applications. Inventive in problem solving on a day-to-day basis, mostly thanks to his rich, hands-on experience with Magento, he feels comfortable proposing alternatives to demands he feels can be improved, even when this means pulling a late shift to meet deadlines. He is no stranger when it comes to topics such as payment and shipping gateways, order and invoice functionalities, various third-party ERP, and fulfillment system integrations with Magento. He holds several respected IT certifications such as Zend Certified Engineer, Magento Certified Developer Plus, and JavaScript Certified Developer.

He currently works as a Chief Technology Officer at Inchoo, a Magento Gold Solution partner company that offers top-quality e-commerce solutions, specializing in the Magento e-commerce platform. He was the first person to join Inchoo after Tomislav (CEO) founded it in May 2008, in Osijek, Croatia.

Instant E-Commerce with Magento: Build a Shop by Packt Publishing was his first Magento-related book oriented toward Magento newcomers, after which he decided to write this one for developers.

Special thanks in writing this book go toward my understanding family and co-workers who found themselves involved in the process.

Matej Krivak is an experienced web/database developer, born and raised in Osijek, Croatia.

He has a Master's degree in Engineering (more specifically, Process Computing) from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Osijek where he graduated with highest honors (that is, summa cum laude).

Matej is currently working for Inchoo, a Croatian company specializing in the creation of e-commerce solutions based on Magento, as a team leader and a senior back-end developer. In the past, he has worked for Dialog, a small Croatian company, where he developed and maintained systems based on Oracle technologies.

He has a good knowledge of Magento, Oracle Designer 9 i /11 g , and various relational database management systems (for example, MySQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server).

Andrea De Pirro graduated with a Master's degree in Computer Engineering at Universit degli Studi di Roma Tre in Rome. He started his career as a Symfony and Drupal developer at Emoveo, an innovative startup in Rome, learning about Agile methodologies and PHP best practices. His next step was moving to Bioversity International, where he developed and managed a digital asset management project with the Alfresco J2EE platform. Then he moved to Wind, one of the largest Italian mobile operators, developing Java and PHP web services. Finally, he moved to Barcelona, working at Newshore on large e-commerce projects based on Magento and Zend Framework, for customers such as Privalia, Groupalia, and Intercom. Now he's co-founder of Yameveo, a company specializing in e-commerce solutions and web applications.

Alistair Stead is Technical Assurance Manager at Session Digital UK and a Magento Certification board member. Alistair has been developing software with PHP and other technologies since 2000 and has helped many enterprise clients from the UK and Europe realize complex commerce solutions.

He speaks regularly at conferences, not only regarding Magento but also many different technical topics relevant to current development practices, performance, and scalability.

In his spare time you will find Alistair tinkering with new technology and tweeting about the results.

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book.

Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at > for more details.

At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.

http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com

Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books.

Why Subscribe?

• Fully searchable across every book published by Packt
• Copy and paste, print and bookmark content
• On demand and accessible via web browser

Free Access for Packt account holders

If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for immediate access.

Preface

Building Magento extensions can be a challenging task for several reasons. On one side a developer is required to have a solid understanding of advanced PHP object-oriented knowledge, while on the other side there are numerous Magento-specific patterns and configuration options you need to master. This book will give you enough insight into the structure and concepts, and teach you a few tricks that will help you master Magento more easily. By the end of the book, you should familiarize yourself with configuration files, models, blocks, controllers, event/observers, shipping, and payment methods. All of these should form a solid foundation for your developing modules later.