What developer tools will help you safely customize Sugar?

[julian]

Hello all,

I'd like to start a discussion based around developer tools. There are plenty of ways to hook into upgrade-safe sections of code in Sugar, but I realize many of these methods are not documented or may not be easy to leverage.

Especially for those of you who are building modules or integrating their own applications with Sugar-- what can we do to make things easier? My initial idea is to introduce a series of wrapper functions for common module-installation tasks, i.e.:

* create_menu() -- create an upgrade-safe menu item in an existing module
* create_logic_hook() -- create an upgrade-safe logic hook in a new or existing module
* update_dropdown() -- create or update an existing dropdown in the system (upgrade-safe)
* create_field() -- easily create a custom field in an existing module (upgrade-safe)

...among others. These would be available to you when creating a new module.

Ideas?

[andopes]

Hi, Julian.

This is really a good discussion.

A feature we have been playing is:

Extending Bean Classes for a specific (and new) action behavior, without overriding the bean itself.
Extending the SugarCRM core classes (ListView, SearchForm etc) for the same purpose.

Cheers

--
André Lopes
Lâmpada Global Services
Rua Bela Cintra, 299 conjunto. 51
São Paulo, SP 01415-000
tel1. 55 11 3237-3110
cel. 55 11 7636-5859
e-mail: info@lampadacrm.com.br

[ruchida]

Extending Bean Classes for a specific (and new) action behavior, without overriding the bean itself.
Extending the SugarCRM core classes (ListView, SearchForm etc) for the same purpose.

Julian,

Thank you for starting a very good discussion.

I second this idea of andopes. Sugar 5.0 seems to be mostly meta-driven and more upgrade-safe than before, but extending a standard class is still very difficult and painful task as before.

By looking into the new developer's site, I understand a custom field can have a custom code to fill out itself, which may be an extension of a standard class. I hope there will be a similar way to extend a standard class, which will utilize the current great architecture like Module Loader, custom codes in the custom directory, meta data, etc.

[andopes]

Hi, ruchida.

I had just started developing into SugarCE 5.0 this week, so I have not yet the big picture about all possibilities.
But you are right.
The Version 5.0 is all metadata-driven and the customCode in the views often simulates the behavior of an extended class, combined to bean controller.

Cheers

--
André Lopes
Lâmpada Global Services
Rua Bela Cintra, 299 conjunto. 51
São Paulo, SP 01415-000
tel1. 55 11 3237-3110
cel. 55 11 7636-5859
e-mail: info@lampadacrm.com.br

[Kalendrinn]

I know it's an UGLY prospect...but the biggest and best tool to start with is full fledged documentation on the system and it's available functions, api, etc. There are a LOT of questions that can be answered with that available. I can't say that I'm that much better than anyone else, but I've realized that it's a true necessity.

The thing I might suggest to help ease doing documentation is doing something along the lines of phpdoc...comment in the code with phpdoc type comments and let php doc run through it and compile the documentation for you. Or something to that effect anyway.

All the functions and tools in the world are great, but they won't help you if you don't know how to use them. :P

[Superman]

Continueing Julians' list of functions how about:

...
* add_to_exempt_from_availability_check() -- safely adds module to $exempt_from_availability_check global array.

[aspeno]

The biggest need I can think of is a standard UI/documentation for one to many inline grid. This is done in several places in Sugar sugar as quote line items and is done using json and javascript. My concern is the way it is done violates the object security module of sugar and there is no documentation of how to do this sort of interface. I keep hoping more of YUI will be used in Sugar and maybe a standard usage of the YUI grid.

[julian]

Thanks for the feedback everybody! Please keep the ideas (and specific functions) coming! I'll be co-presenting with my boss at SugarCon on this topic, and hope to have a timeframe ready for when this developer kit will be available.

[ruchida]

I like SugarCRM to have a "lightweight" plug-in architecture so that a developer can easily port external open source applications into SugarCRM. Those applications are wiki, blog, forum, groupware, cms, e-learning, human resource, etc. With this architecture, these applications appear in the navigation tab area and users can use them without logging in them again.

The plug-in architecture will provide;

1. API to share an authenticated user (and a team) information
2. API to share roles
3. API to install/uninstall an external application. It may just install a module information only in the SugarCRM side, and an actual application may reside in another area.

[nbiondi]

I'm not quite sure if this is a fitting thread for this or not, but I would really like to have good documentation and maybe even a walkthrough demonstration on how to build a module package from scratch without the module builder. And not one that has to do with anything older then 5.0. Everywhere I look is always mentioning the module builder which is (in my opinion) clumsy and restrictive. I used the newest SugarCRM_Developer book from Packet Publishing that I bought to help me understand the package/module structure, but the book seems to be out-dated already in this area. I then built a module using a tutorial for this candidate and requisition module which I then exported to a zip so that I could reverse engineer it to create a package for the module I had built using the Packet Publishing book. After many many hours of frustration, reading and re-writing I have about given up on finding anything or anyone to help me or point me in the right direction. http://www.sugarcrm.com/forums/showt...hlight=foreach

The company that I work for and I would really like to move from SalesForce to SugarCRM, but I need some help in the developing end of things to prove the benefit. The SugarBean wiki is incomplete and outdated as with much of the wiki. I am very excited of the possibilities of SugarCRM. Keep up the great work. Thank you for any offer of wisdom in advance.

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