Customizing 5 0

DRAFT

Introduction

There are three different approaches on how the system can be customized without touching the original source code and ensure a future update to a newer version will be painless. Those approaches are:

Scope	Impact	Purpose	Implementation
Global	Whole system	Global customizings can be used to extend existing functionality on applications or implement completely new applications.	Customizing folder /customizing
Website	Only a specific website	In a MultiSite environment it is possible to implement customizings that are specific to a particular website. Website specific customizings can be used to alter a particular application only for a single website in a MultiSite environment.	Data repository folder of website /websites/<website>
Theme	Only a specific theme	Theme specific customizings can be used adjust the frontend view of applications to match the layout of a particular design theme.	Design theme folder /themes/<theme>

Global Customizings

Basic

Generally all files can be copied to the customizing directory in due consideration of the folder structure.

So a whole shop module could be copied to the folder /customizing/modules and the shop will still work. Requirements for a working Customizing are:

Requirements

• Customizing-folder has to be defined (default is /customizing)
• Customizings have to be activated (default is deactivated, option "Customizing" under "Global Configuration" - "Other configuration options" in Contrexx administration)
• The file is a PHP file or will be loaded from the template system or from a JS class
• The file will not be called directly (e.g. /index.php, /cadmin/index.php, /core/License/versioncheck.php, and so on)
• The file has to be in the same folder (from /modules/shop/index.class.php to e.g. /customizing/modules/shop/index.class.php)

Constraints

This feature does not work for these cases:

• Javascript files included in template files (can be loaded with JS::activate())
• Directly called files (index.php, and so on)
• Manually included php files (via require(_once) or include(_once)) without \Env::get('ClassLoader')->loadFile($path);
• Images and other resources (can be included on php side. The following method will return the absolute path to the requested file: \Env::get('ClassLoader')->getFilePath($path);)

See the ClassLoader article for detailed information about ClassLoaders.

Website Customizings

Generally all files can be copied to the data repository directory of a website in due consideration of the folder structure.

So a whole shop module could be copied to the folder /websites/<website>/modules and the shop will still work.

Theme Customizings

Generally all files from the View-layer (files located in the View folder of a Component) can be copied to a Theme folder in due consideration of the folder structure, but by omitting the View-folder itself.

I.e. a set of customized images of the Shop application can be stored in /themes/<theme>/modules/Shop/Media/