Module help desperately needed

[nicholak]

Hi everyone. I am fairly new to Sugarcrm, and am a PHP developer of only a few years. I am trying to determine how to proceed with a development that involves the importation (& later syncronisation) of data from an external source. Briefly the requirement is:

1 - Import customer data from an external source. This has relationships with 3 other tables which also will need to be imported into new tables in Sugar.
2 - create the required views etc to enable viewing of these 3 different data sets as they relate to the customer (Account).

My current understanding of Sugar suggests that this requires:

a) A new table in a 1 to 1 relationship with accounts, to upload additional customer data to as well as the required index for the other data sets
b) 3 new tables for the other data sets that relate to the customer
c) whatever is required to make this appear and integrate into Sugar

Point c is where I am hitting a wall. I have searched the wiki and forums, and am unable to come up with a practical example of a module that will suffice, or a suitably detailed (read newbie) explanation of the requirements to achieve this outcome.

I would appreciate any feedback that would assist in getting this to step a above and a simple integration of just this data into a workable demo. Thnak you.

Nicholas

[nicholak]

Can anyone please suggest an example module for Sugar 5 that can be used as a skeleton for developing my own module, preferably with some installation instructions?

I am really struggling to find the glue that fits all of the information together in a way that enables me to move forward. There is lots of info about using module builder & studio, yet when I click deploy they result i an error:

Failed to copy /var/www/sugar5b2/cache/upload/upgrades/temp/15gkm1/icons themes

/sugar5b2/cache has permissions of 777, but I am unsure where the copying is being done to so cannot check the target permissions. Is the module builder all that is required to create and deploy additional tables of data? I will need to import the data from an external source - does the module deployment actually create new tables?

Thanks in advance.

Nicholas

[susiewilliams]

Hi there,

We are putting the finishing touches on a new Developer website that contains tutorials for Module Builder as wel as Studio, and other 5.0-specific topics too. The site should be live in a week or so, and when it is, you can check out the tutorials and code samples.

Another resource you can try for 4.5.1-style module development is the excellent developer manual by Dr. Mark Alexander Bain. It's from Packt Publishing, and you can learn about it here. It contains a step-by-step guide to customization.

[slc71]

Is the developer's manual still a valid resource for building your own code in version 5?
It seems like version 5 has much of the dev work built-in now that is covered in the manual, i.e. building your own module.
Basically I just want to build some code that imports data into a custom module table, but i cannot figure out how to integrate the code it into sugar.
Can anyone point me in a direction?
I have watched some of the videos and read thru the wiki, but maybe I am just missing something.
Should I wait for the "SugarCRM Development for Dummies"?

[susiewilliams]

Well, if you can make it to San Jose, CA in a few weeks, you can join lots of other developers for three days of developer sessions, informal discussions, and general revelry during our SugarCon 2008 Developer and User conference.

It's probably the fastest way to get up to speed through immersion in all things Sugar!