This article will guide the development of the CRE Loaded Joomla! Ecommerce extension.

DEVELOPMENT NOTES (Revised 2009/11/16):

• System plugin only works with all 6.3 versions (all variations of 6.4 brings up errors)
  • To be Investigated Under 6.4... Fatal error: Class 'JURI' not found in /home/dvanwijk/public_html/crejoomla.com/demo/libraries/joomla/application/application.php on line 192 - SOLVED - To Be Actioned: The line which was causing this error was line 18 of includes/functions/general.php which is the spl_autoload_register('creClassLoader'); This needs to be changed to accomodate Joomla 1.5.x. This took a hell of a long time to find but this needs to be changed if you want the CRE API to work with version 6.4 and above.
• Joomla and CRE must be installed into the same database (need to write a dedicated database functions file (tep_db_...) to accommodate concurrent db connectivity if CRE is in a separate db)

Joomla! System Plugin (plg_system.creloaded-api)

• Location of CRE Installation
  • Manual configuration by user required
• HTTPS URL
  • Setting for custom shared SSL
  • Checkout pages are the only page affected by this setting and they require the custom forced SSL setting
• Enable or disable entire integration
• Disable access to CRE directly of plugin enabled? Could write to the .htaccess file when plugin enabled? Remove what is written when disabled?

Joomla! User Plugin (plg_user.creloaded-api)

• User authentication takes place with Joomla! and CRE
• Any information that exists as a common field for one platform will be brought across to the other with allowances for the user to have to fill in additional registration information to satisfy the requirements of the other platform.
  • New Joomla! Users
    • If CRE user NOT exists;
      • Registration from Joomla! (whether email activation set or not) is required anyway. Populate Joomla and CRE with new user info.
    • If CRE user DOES exist;
      • The custom login module to replace the Joomla! login module will determine if user entered a username or email and will authenticate from there. Then check authentication against CRE customer database and will ask for a Joomla! username to complete new Joomla registration and will auto-populate Joomla! record with the following;
        • Joomla! Namel -> CRE First Name + CRE Last Name
        • Joomla! Email -> CRE Email
        • Joomla! Password -> CRE Password
  • New CRE Users;
    • If Joomla! user NOT exists;
      • Registration from Joomla! (whether email activation set or not) is required anyway. Populate Joomla and CRE with new user info.
    • If Joomla! user DOES exist;
      • The custom login module to replace the Joomla login module will determine if user entered a username or email and will authenticate from there. Then check authentication against Joomla! user database and will ask for CRE required registration to complete new CRE registration and will auto-populate CRE record with the following;
        • CRE Email -> Joomla! Email
        • CRE Password -> Joomla! Password

Joomla! Component (com_creloaded-api)

• Display pages (also called views in Joomla! for adding to Joomla! menus)
  • Default CRE Loaded page
  • Category listing of Subcategories page
  • Category listing of Products page
  • Product detail page
  • Featured products page
  • Special products page
  • New products page
  • Shopping cart contents page
  • Checkout shipping page
  • Checkout payment page
  • Checkout confirmation page
  • Checkout success page
  • Order history page
  • Order detail page
  • Advanced product search page???
• Configurable options for adding menu items for the above pages
  • E.g. when adding "Category listing of Products page", user needs to be able to select which category to view
  • Stylesheet suffix variable

Joomla! Search Plugin (plg_search.creloaded-api)

• Need to decide which product information to search on (i.e. product name, description, manufacturer, model no, etc)

Joomla! Modules (mod_creloaded-...)

• Category lister
• New product rotator
• Special product rotator
• Featured product rotator
• Mini shopping cart (summary in header)
• Shopping cart contents (for left and right? Does this mean left-aligned and right-aligned text dependant on position on page?)
• Best seller list
• Price range filter
• Manufacturer listing
• Login module - replaces Joomla! login module to cater logging on with either username or email

Entire Joomla! Package Installer

• Install all plugins, modules and component together

Planned Milestone Releases

• Milestone 1
  • System Plugin and 1 page in component to verify it works
• Milestone 2
  • User Plugin and all other pages
• Milestone 3
  • Search Plugin and all Module
• Milestone 4
  • Entire Joomla! Package Installer
• Stable Release
  • Once everything is tested sufficiently