Magento Developper’s Guide (Lesson 2) – Create your own controller

This tutorial is the 2nd of many tutorials , you will now learn how to create your own controller in Magento. If you have not read the first articles yet, I strongly advise you to do so.  With Magento, you can access to your controller with the url:yoursite.com/plugin/method/

Start by creating your module:

1 – Create the folder /app/code/local/Easylife/Test/
This create your namespace Easylife and your module Test .

2 – Enable the module in Magento:
Add a file Easylife_all.xml /app/etc/module/

And insert the following code in it

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
    <modules>
        <Easylife_Test>
            <active>true</active>
            <codePool>local</codePool>
        </Easylife_Test>
    </modules>
</config>

This file is used to declare all your modules in the Easylife namespace, you have to put it between the tags « modules » declaration of your plugin one after the other.

<Easylife_Test>
            <active>true</active>
            <codePool>local</codePool>
</Easylife_Test>

Easylife_Test allows you to declare the namespace of your plugin Test Easylife.

 active: true = the plugin is active
false = the plugin is not enabled

codePool: The module will be in the local file because it is a module that we create ourselves (remember the lesson 1).
Magento will therefore find the files in that module in the /app/code/ local/Easylife/Test/

ahead and create the controller:

go to /app/code/local/Easylife/Test/

1 – Create the file /app/code/local/Easylife/Test/controllers/
2 – Inside create a IndexController.php which will contain:

<?php
class Easylife_Test_IndexController extends Mage_Core_Controller_Front_Action
{
    public function indexAction ()
    {
        echo 'test index';
    }
    public function mymethodeAction ()
    {
        echo 'test my method';
    }

}

Now if you go to yoursite.com/test/index

What’s happening?

Actually … you can not find the page, there’s an error because you have not already declare your controller in the plugin.

Config.xml file to configure your plugin:

In the same way that you have declared your plugin for Magento to take into account Easylife_All.xml, the file config.xml of your plugin will allow you to you declare the controller of your plugin.

Mangento will check Easylife_All.xml and find your file, it will go in your /app/code/local/Easylife/Test/etc/ and reads the config.xml file to see or pick up your controller.
So create your file Test , a record etc/ with in config.xml .
config.xml contains:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
    <modules>
        <Easylife_Test>
            <version>0.1.0</version>
        </Easylife_Test>
    </modules>
    <frontend>
        <routers>
            <test>
                <use>standard</use>
                <args>
                    <module>Easylife_Test</module>
                    <frontName>test</frontName>
                </args>
            </test>
        </routers>
    </frontend>
</config>

Explanation:

 <modules>
        <Easylife_Test>
            <version>0.1.0</version>
        </Easylife_Test>
    </modules>

In this section, we declare the identity of the module for magento module to verify that what you declare in your Easylife_All.xml is the good plugin and if the version number allow you to eventually have an update for your plugin.

<routers>
            <test>
                <use>standard</use>
                <args>
                    <module>Easylife_Test</module>
                    <frontName>test</frontName>
                </args>
            </test>
</routers>

Allows you to declare a router « routeurfrontend » which is actually the road used by magento to access your controller. In our example, the router is « standard » (it means that it is a module that will be displayed on the frontend).The module name is Easylife_Test and the shortcut to access it via the url is test and when you will type yoursite.com/test/index, we arrive on the index method of your controller IndexController.php (in your folder controllers )

You can also access it using your router in place of frontName.

yoursite.com/routeurfrontend/index/

Now test your module :

yoursite.com/test/index you can read « test index » (you can add /index at the end of your url if you want to call the index method but by default if nothing is specified it calls the method « index »)
You know now create a controller. Now try to understand this by doing it again and again at home and you should be able to move on the next tutorial.

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