developing "add-ons" for modx

Hello,

I am a PHP developer whose field is small application development. I am interested in developing add-ons and would like to know where to find some solid tutorials into creating "add-ons". I am a bit confused here

do I develop for/ develop as plugins/ modules or components? what are the differences? I am targeting content driven application e.g. galleries, specific data driven master and details dynamic type content etc.

I have installed the modx rev and currently reviewing your documentations. Can you shed some insight into this?

Kendall

Try to make some website on MODx first before diving into customization.

To put in a nutshell,
- modules are meant to extend the backend (/manager);
- snippet is a PHP script which you may embed into resources, templates, chunks. You may pass different parameters to snippets either from a call (when embedding) or from $_POST/$_GET.
- plugin is a PHP script which is called on some events (you specify them).

You mention dynamic content. I’ve explained the logic of dealing with it using snippets in the neighboring topic:
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,56617.0.html

In Revolution
- Modules do not exist anymore, we have CMP, Custom Manager Pages...

Indeed, be careful not to get mixed up with Evolution and Revolution while developing add-ons. They are two different codebases. While usage isn’t all that different, development is quite different.

Quote from: Daedalus at Nov 06, 2010, 09:06 AM

Try to make some website on MODx first before diving into customization.

I have worked with DRUPAL(has some similar traits with MODx I have observed ) and WORDPRESS and I have gotten "the gist" of using it to create websites. One of my main purposes here is that I build small web applications and MODx "seems" like a powerful FRAMEWORK to develop it on. Thanks for your enlightenment though.


Quote from: sottwell at Nov 07, 2010, 01:11 AM

Indeed, be careful not to get mixed up with Evolution and Revolution while developing add-ons. They are two different codebases. While usage isn’t all that different, development is quite different.

Thanks for that distinction I think I will be developing for revolution. But I must admit the whole php and mysql version issues with it have me a bit worrying.

My question here comes from the research i have done so far... Lets say for example I want to develop an application that shows a directory of stores that visitors can search through and a back-end for it so that administrators can manage its information. Does it mean i have to develop a

• Custom Manager Page - to handle the management of the information.
• Snippet - to handle the display of it

So is it safe to say that I need to develop a "component" or a "package"?
I was trying to analyze what is needed in order to implement such an application through MODx by studying the gallery package I recently installed. I understand the coding concepts...but its implementation in terms of "what is needed in order to build it" is what i am trying to figure out

You might, or might not, need a CMP for that. I would say it depends on how many products and/or stores there will be. If there won’t be that many, you can use a resource (document) for each product and a container document for each store. It’s not the most efficient, but it may let users manage things in a customized Manager without any true custom manager pages.

It sound like you *will* be creating a Transport Package. You may be able to create it simply with the PackMan component -- it depends on what it will include. If not, you’ll have to write the transport package build code yourself.

Quote from: BobRay at Nov 08, 2010, 01:43 PM

You might, or might not, need a CMP for that.

The purpose here is to LEARN how to build web applications using MODx... any tutorials out there that might prove useful?

Download the modExtra package from github:
https://github.com/splittingred/modExtra

That covers most of the basics in terms of creating a custom table, CMP manager grids and custom processing into a very basic application. Use it in conjunction with the RTFM docs on developing in MODx http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Advanced+Development and it would be worth downloading and installing the Quip package as a minimum to help flesh out the basics of modExtra.

There have been a couple of really interesting examples of work posted over the last couple of days - eg http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=56918screenshots only alas. You can also have a look at Bruno17’s xdbedit package on github, plus the forums.

But basically, speaking as a non-traditional developer (ie my background is IA and strategy), it’s a case of hacking around until it makes sense.

I think this is what you’re looking for:

http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Case+Studies+and+Tutorials