Magento’s Marketplace plays a significant role in the platform’s success. Here, one can expand a website’s functionality without writing any new code. Magento extension development can cover anything, from adding payment processing to facilitating reviews from satisfied customers.
Best Practices For Extension Developers
The better the quality of the add-ons on the Marketplace, the more people will benefit from the Magento platform. If you want to step into the extension development realm, you need to keep some best practices in mind. All in all, your aim is to develop an add-on that behaves and functions properly within the overall architecture.
Coding Standards Are Necessary
Regardless of whether you are flying solo or part of a team, you need to follow a set of coding guidelines. Otherwise, your code will be inconsistent and difficult to maintain. The PHP_CodeSniffer is a valuable tool to help developers stick to coding standards such as Zend, PSR2, and PSR4.
Reuse Code As Much As Possible
Prevent code duplication by writing small, focused classes or methods you can reference whenever necessary. Don’t write redundant code that you copy and paste throughout your extension. That will make your add-on challenging to maintain. Always write to provide a generic solution and think about reusing code in future development.
Write Replaceable Code
To make updates and improvements a smoother journey, implement a replaceable design in your code. When your code is modular and loosely coupled, replacing parts of it when bugs and newer methods appear will be a much more efficient process.
Refactor Your Helper Class Code
Keep in mind that helper or utility classes violate the principles of object-oriented programming (OOP). These are static methods that don’t really fit elsewhere. For example, the next time you have a helper class containing static functions for ClassX, you should work on refactoring them into ClassX. Do not have a catch-all for your random methods; move them appropriately.
Follow Standard Naming Conventions
Standard naming conventions are necessary for files, folder names, classes, and methods. When you are consistent, you and other developers will find it easier to read, understand, and maintain your code. Aside from looking professional, this practice will adhere to coding standards.
Choose Object Composition Over Class Inheritance
At the time of Magento 1, development centered around class inheritance, an OOP concept related to reusing code and extending the behavior of a base class. For Magento 2 extension development, programmers should adhere to object composition instead. This programming concept combines class objects and data types to create more complex classes. Consequently, extensions are easier to maintain and update.
Only Use Around Plugins When Necessary
Around method plugins increase stack traces and affect code performance. Therefore, programmers should avoid them except for terminating the execution of further plugins and original methods. With Magento 2, after method plugins provide access to method parameters. Thus, they are the current preferred method to replace or modify function outputs using arguments.
Follow The Testing Guide
After developing an extension, a programmer needs to create tests for it according to the Testing Guide. It’s essential to see if your code performs under different circumstances and whether it functions correctly. The tests should encompass a variety of conditions to identify and prevent bugs.
Stay Away From Modifying The Code Code
Magento’s core code comes with the application. Programmers should avoid editing it and instead override interface preferences or use plugins and event observers. Remember that code changes happen during version upgrades, overriding any modifications made. Developers can contribute any core code suggestions through Git.
Conclusion
Aside from the fundamental best practices outlined above, a programmer must study the model–view–controller (MVC) architecture. Another crucial point to note is data security. Developers often do not handle data requests properly, leading to the exposure of sensitive information. Don’t shy away from getting in touch with other extension developers. The Magento forums contain thousands of participants ready to lend a helping hand.
