Chapter 12. Building a Module from Scratch

Based on the knowledge acquired from previous chapters, we will now build a miniature Helpdesk module. Though miniature, the module will showcase the usage of several important Magento platform features as we go through the following sections:

• Registering a module (registration.php and module.xml)

• Creating a configuration file (config.xml)

• Creating e-mail templates (email_templates.xml)

• Creating a system configuration file (system.xml)

• Creating access control lists (acl.xml)

• Creating an installation script (InstallSchema.php)

• Managing entity persistence (model, resource, collection)

• Building a frontend interface

• Building a backend interface

• Creating unit tests