A simple plugin for the frontend

Here's a good guide how to develop a simple plugin. The goal is to display random slogans where the logo is. The logo locates at the top left of the pages of Shopware.

Follow the guide and in the end zip the SwagSloganOfTheDay folder. Then login to the backend of Shopware, go to Plugin-Manager -> Local extensions, choose the .zip file and click the Install button.

Great references for our project

Here you can find valuable references for developing plugins for both the frontend and backend of Shopware.

MVC in practice

Here's a great link to a tutorial for implementation of MVC with the Zend framework. The tutorial is given in two parts. You will learn how to set up the database and create necessary php and phtml files in order to implement a simple MVC with the Zend framework.

MVC

It's crucial to study the MVC design pattern carefully because Shopware is based on MVC. Surely, if we get to know the concept right now, we'll get less into trouble later during the implementation. Here's a great post, but in German! In the following, I write down what I learned from the post:

Model:
provides data (either from the database or simple arrays) for the controller.

View:
is a layer between the controller and the template. The view receives the data from the controller and embeds them in the template. What user sees in the browser is the content of the template in which the data are assigned to the variables.

Controller:
- Gets the parameters of the request.
- Gets the data from the database and send them to the view.
- Decides what template should be loaded.