Developing eZ Publish extensions

Credits: This tutorial is written by Felix Woldt, JAC Systeme (CJW Network), an eZ Partner in Germany. Thank you Felix for sharing this great work!

Most Content Management System requirements can be fulfilled by eZ Publish without any custom PHP coding. But sooner or later experienced eZ Publish implementers get to the point where a project needs some special functionality and it becomes necessary to develop extensions.

This tutorial will help you with the basics of writing extensions using a simple example to illustrate the concepts.

Prerequisites

• An eZ Publish 4.x installation
• Basic understanding of the structure of eZ Publish
• Basic knowledge of PHP, SQL, MySQL and HTML

What will be demonstrated

In this tutorial you will learn how to create and configure a simple extension. It will also show how the eZ Publish framework can be used for development.

• What are eZ Publish extensions
• Creating a new extension
• Configuring and enabling the extension
• Activating the extension
• Template system
• Creating a view
• Accessing the database
• Template fetch function
• Template operators
• INI file
• Conclusion