Web Development (10)
Even More Magento Development Links
Here are even more links to those that need some direction when programming in Magento.
- This first link teaches one how to access certain parts of the order on the confirmation page. Covers loading an order by id also covers loading the last order created by the system.
- This next link teaches you how to run your custom SQL queries. This is very useful for debugging/testing custom modules.
- This last link is useful for when you're making a custom page in the frontend and you only want logged in users to see it.
Helpful Web Development Links
- This link is a great coding resource to ones wheels turning. The site shows how you can take a multitude of APIs and make something completely new
- W3Schools has got to be one of the best all around resources for developers. Help topics cover anything from ASP, PHP, SQL, JavaScript, and all the way down to HTML. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced web coder there's something here for you.
- This next link covers topics for developers as well as designers. Learn how to do something in Ruby On Rails as well as making a fresh clean looking wallpaper in Photoshop. In short, a little bit of learning for everyone.
You Have to Search Solutions to Make Solutions
I like my blogs to be creative, humorous and somewhat personalized and congruent to my experiences regarding the current week. Not to mention they should be related to the industry in which I work. However, sometimes when the time comes to write my weekly blog I cannot think of anything that creates that 'light-bulb-above-the-head' scenario. So here is what I am going to do...
Below is a list of my bookmarks from this week. This will paint a picture of what I have been working on these past four days.
Magento - code for items in cart
Magento - change number of products in row on specific pages
Magento - moving blocks to different columns
Magento - editing language files
Magento - set product image size
Magento - display random products on homepage
Yes, lots of Magento. Two sites at once in fact. Keep in mind that these are only bookmarked because they contained the solution to the search term. Yup, that means we succeeded in all these (and more). Call us already! We know what we are doing!
1-800-338-8102
Miva Merchant PR 7 Development
With the release of PR 7 (Wombat) the payment module now needs to send a checkout session to the gateway so the gateway can send it back. If the payment module doesn't include this with the PR 7 release then the user will receive a "Session has timed out" error upon returning to the retail site.
To overcome this the exact line that one has to include is the following:
One of my complaints with Miva Merchant is the lack of documentation so therefore I had a difficult time trying to do mundane things like get variables and pass them along to the payment gateway. Below is how I got some of the more important variables.
Cart Total:
Billing Zip:
Billing Email:
The only thing that helped me out was searching through the LSK. If you didn't know, the LSK is Miva's answer to proper documentation which of course is a complete joke.
Discussion on Open Source Solutions for Local Government
I came across this article and thought it was quite interesting. A lot of good questions are brought up about why City and County Governments don't adopt the use of open source technologies such as Content Management Systems, CRM's, etc. More importantly, case studies show how 6 different government entities have adopted Open Source with great success. Even the Department of Defense uses it! Chepri Interactive understands the benefits of Open Source software such as Joomla, Magento, and Liferay - do you?
More Magento Development Links
- If you ever wanted to include an extension into Magento Connect and want the ability for people to install it via the admin area of their site then read this link.
- If you ever wanted to create your own shipping module this is a good reference.
- If you ever have/had a client ask to save the CVV information from a card so they can process orders off-line then this link should do the trick. **NOTE** This isn't really a good idea especially considering all the recent PCI compliance talk lately.
Magento Development Links
We've been developing several different Magento-based sites here at Chepri recently. Below are some links that have come in handy when developing custom modules and needing to retrieve aspects relating to attributes/products.
- - Get Products with a specific attribute value
- - Retrieving the country and region(states) collection
- - This is a great little shortcut/extension to use when you first start out creating a custom module.
**NOTE** If the module has custom parts in the admin area you'll have to create an adminhtml.xml file in the etc folder if the module is for 1.4.X and above. - - How to add color swatches to your product pages/attributes.
What CMS is good for my eCommerce Site?
In the realm of Content Management Systems (CMS's), one would think that one product would be able to beat out the others and claim the spot as "the best" among its peers. Often our clients come into their projects set on using one particular CMS for their implementation, but ultimately choose another based on the feature set. Most are ran on the same technology (php), but have different frameworks with different sets of strengths...
Code Links
Javascript:
The following link is a good resource for implementing a character count/limit within an HTML textarea form element. It keeps a running total next to the textarea so the user knows how many characters they have left.
http://www.shiningstar.net/articles/articles/javascript/dynamictextareacounter.asp
MISC:
The next link is used for testing ecommerce carts/checkouts. The link simply lists various credit cards and sample numbers that a developer can use to test a shopping cart checkout process.
https://www.paypal.com/en_US/vhelp/paypalmanager_help/credit_card_numbers.htm
PHP:
This next link is for how to properly upload an image using an HTML input form element with the type="file" attribute. The howto works perfectly, however, I ended up using a PHP class instead of this method. Like I said, it works perfectly I just found something that was easier and more efficient to use for my task-at-hand.
http://www.reconn.us/content/view/30/51/
Until Next Time,
David Varney
Interactive Developer
Chepri Interactive
IE Losing Ground
According to an article over at Engadget IE has been losing ground at a steady pace (0.92%/month). The article further explains that Net Applications is estimating that IE use could sink to 50% market share by May 2010. It would be nice if this were the case but it seems very unlikely.
Something this article didn't highlight is the fact that Chrome has overtaken Safari in the browser market share. As someone that uses Chrome as their main browser I was elated that other people are seeing the light. However, Chrome's market share has been close behind Safari for a while now. The fact that Chrome is available for Macs now probably has something to do with them surpassing Safari.
As a web developer I can't wait for the day when Microsoft faces reality and drops IE development all together.
David Varney
Web Developer
Chepri.com