The config is the beating heart of the Magento System. It describe, in whole, almost any module/model/class/template/etc than you'll need to access. It's a level of abstraction that most PHP developers aren't used to working with, and while it adds development time in the
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The Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture traces its origins back to the Smalltalk Programming language and Xerox Parc. Since then there have been many systems that describe their architecture as MVC. Each system is slightly different, but all have the goal of separating data access, business
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Update: In researching No Frills Magento Layout it became apparent that this article contains incorrect and misleading information. Specifically, the sections on block and reference tags is incorrect. The article still contains useful context (handles, layout XML, etc.), so I'm letting it stand
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The implementation of a "Models Tier" is a huge part of any MVC framework. It represents the data of your application, and most applications are useless without data. Magento Models play an even bigger role, as they typically contain the "Business Logic" that's often
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On any fast paced software development project, the task of keeping the development and production databases in sync become a sticky wicket. Magento offers a system to create a versioned resource migration scripts that can help your team deal with this often contentious part
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In our last article we told you there were two kinds of Models in Magento. Regular, or "simple" Models, and Entity Attribute Value (or EAV) Models. We also told you this was a bit of a fib. Here's where we come clean.
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One of the more powerful parts of the Magento eCommerce System is the Admin's System Config section. As a developer, it will allow you to quickly and easily setup forms elements that allow your end-users to configure their Magento System and your custom modules
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Last time we talked about Magento's System Configuration system. If you missed it, you'll want to go back and catch up. So, we glossed over a lot of the tags you could use within an individual field.
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Originally, as a PHP programmer, if you wanted to collect together a group of related variables you had one choice, the venerable Array. While it shares a name with C's array of memory addresses, a PHP array is a general purpose dictionary like object
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An oft-touted and often overused feature of The Magento Ecommerce System is the ability to override core system behavior. Another oft-discussed topic for Magento developers is upgradability, and how overrides get in the way of that. Today we're going to look at the various
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This is more of an addendum to my previous articles on the System Configuration system than an entirely new article. Go back and read up if anything's over your head.
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