Introduction

Unless you’re a seasoned Magento pro, you may be a little confused when you set out to research the platform online. On one side you’ll find legions of developers who swear by it as the way to build internet based retail solutions. On the other side you’ll find a contingent of folks griping about Magento’s steep learning curve, relative cost, and general ease of use when compared with software as a service solutions like Shopify or Etsy.

This discrepancy boils down to one thing: Magento is not a platform built to directly serve the end-user. Instead, it’s a technology/business platform that’s designed for other businesses. Instead of setting out to build the best platform for building a web-based store, Magento Inc. (now an eBay division), focused on creating opportunities for businesses in the internet enabled retail industry (i.e. e-commerce).

Was this the right choice? That’s another topic for another book. Our concern is how these choices impact Magento’s technology stack. Magento’s a massive codebase optimized for configurability over ease of use. It’s built with PHP but with Java/C# enterprise software patterns. Magento is many things, but “My First Development Project” is not one of them.

However, for those individuals and companies willing to invest some time learning the platform, as well as learning general software development techniques, Magento offers unprecedented power and control over the online retail experience. Additionally, there’s an always growing online community of open source developers using the platform and sharing techniques. Not even the cutthroat world of e-commerce can stop the power of open source software from growing and spreading.

What This Book Is

No Frills Command Line Magento is two things.

First, it’s a primer/manual for the popular and powerful n98-magerun tool. This command line tool automates and simplifies many of Magento’s administrative tasks, and is a no brainer if you’re handling day to day IT tasks related to Magento administration.

Secondly, No Frills Command Line Magento is, in a stealthy way, a survey of modern PHP development. In teaching you about n98-magerun, you’ll also get a high level overviews of

• PHP phar Archives
• PHP Composer
• PHP Namespaces
• PHP Phing
• Symfony’s Console Application Framework
• Unix Shell Scripting

Beyond learning about these important development topics, the process of installing, building, and running n98-magerun will give you a methodology for approaching any new PHP project. No Frills Command Line Magento is a great, (and quick), read for those developers looking to hop on the programming track and take a step up from the world of entry level blue collar development.

This book is for PHP programmers of all experience levels. If you can install Magento and run ls from the terminal, there’s something for you in this book.

About the Author and Publisher

No Frills Command Line Magento is authored by Alan Storm. Alan (that’s me) is the owner of Pulse Storm, a small technology publishing company focused on improving the working lives of the programmers who do the work that makes the web run.

His first book, No Frills Magento Layout, remains the go to resource for developers learning Magento’s Layout system, and Pulse Storm’s Magento debugging extension Commerce Bug has been saving Magento developer’s (tempeh) bacon for years.

Continue the Conversation Online

In 2013 no development book is ever done. If you have any questions about the content, noticed a typo, or just want to see what others are saying about the book online, checkout the discussion forum at

https://leanpub.com/command-line-magento/feedback

If there’s a concern about the the book you’d like to share privately, or you’d just like to say hi, please contact Pulse Storm directly.

http://www.pulsestorm.net/contact-us/

About “No Frills”

The “No Frills” book series is all about getting you the information you need to get your job done while teaching you a thing or two along the way about the bigger picture. Shorter than traditional technology books, by sticking to electronic delivery we avoid the problems with padding and frills associated with physical publishing.

Disclaimers

 1 THIS BOOK AND SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND
 2 CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
 3 INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
 4 MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
 5 DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS
 6 BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
 7 EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
 8 TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
 9 DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON
10 ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR
11 TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF
12 THE USE OF THIS BOOK AND SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
13 POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.