Customer Reviews

php/architect's Guide to E-Commerce Programming with Magento

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book is poorly organized. After reading the book twice, I still don't feel confident in significantly modifying magento. The author's lack of explanation and poor writing style made it hard to understand what he was explaining. I feel completely lost in the book several time. The lack of code example made the problem worse. I couldn't help thinking if the irresponsible author/publisher was just trying to make a quick buck by being the first magento book on the market.

What the author/publisher should have done is have the book read by a developer who's new to Magento and ask him to develop a decent size module from scratch with information just from the book. The author also should have included web and forum materials in the book so that reader don't have to search back and forth.

I give the book 2 star because it's still better than no book at all. I hope better, more complete magento book comes out soon....

This book is very poorly written. The author simply jumps from one topic to another without any introduction. Example, he begins the CMS Integration chapter by simply jumping into it without really any intro into what Magento provides as a CMS solution. I find this book extremely difficult to follow. The author dwells into technical concepts of Magento without giving a thorough explanation of the concepts. he also uses different terms interchangeably expecting the reader to somehow understand these terms. The point is if someone is buying this book, it's because they know very little or nothing of Magento, however the author assumes that the reader is already a Magento developer.

While this is the only book on the market for getting into the inner bowls of the Magento Beast, it was rushed to market. I understand that things move quickly, especially in the world of open source, however there have been 10 releases of Magento since the May 2008 publish date. Many of the examples in the book do not work. They may have worked at one point but not any longer. You will need to spend a lot of time on wikis and forums to get the some of the complex examples working. Ideally you would have a companion website with errata and updates for code samples, no such luck here, you're on your own.

In addition, the book is poorly written and I don't think there was an editor (doesn't seem like it anyhow).

Would I still purchase this book again? Yes I would. It still provides a glimpse into how Magento works... not to mention it is the only book out there.

I think this book is getting a bad rap from people who were hoping for a book on Magento design. This is not a book on design, but a programming book that explains in depth the inner workings of Magento, with excellent explanations on how the data flows. If I had tried to read this book 6 months ago, when I first started working with Magento, it probably would not have made much sense.

I had read the poor reviews and almost didn't buy the book. However, in a discussion on Stack Overflow about "How does Magento code work?" someone recommended Mark's book, so I gave it another chance and bought a copy.

Much to my surprise, as I started reading it, everything made perfect sense. I found the author's explanations to be thorough, introductions and summaries to be concise and informative. Overall for something so heavily technical, it is an easy read.

Great job Mark, and thanks for turning the lights on for us.

this a great little book for any developer looking to learn more about Magento. The book is very general but explains very well many of the aspects about Magento.
I would love the book to be more specific and with examples.
I would recommend this book but I am on the lookout for other Magento books that come out

I got this book shortly after it became publicly available. There is some code in the book that is outdated or does not work anymore, and i see that people may quickly come to the conclusion that the book was rushed or released early. However, you have to keep in mind that Magento code, particularly during the time he was writing the book, was (and still is) updated VERY frequently - usually 1 to 3 releases a month! So with all that said, this book is great to get you introduced to the concepts and ways Magento operates, but don't rely on the code as a working example. This book was released in May of 2008 (according to the inside cover, and from when i remember buying it) and to date there have been SEVENTEEN version releases since!!! Documentation everywhere has had a rough time keeping up, particularly in officially published material, like this book. It's a great reference in general for programmers to get theoretical understanding of parts of Magento, and i hope a much updated revision is released again as the software is stabilizing.

I like this book. It provided me with a quick run through the Magento commerce system. Some of the complaints here are really the fault of the system or the publisher's Book Series.

Magento is a project that is in a constant state of change.

This is a "NanoBook" by PHP|Architect, the purpose is to provide the user with a quick run through the system. With that limit in mind, I think this book exceeded my expectation.

Here are some of my points on the book:
- The author opens with an explanation on how to setup your system to develop locally. This is a plus for anyone not already doing this.
- He explains the database model chosen by the Magento developers.
- He shows the reader how to alter the product display page to change the quantity of tagged products with a drop down.
- CMS Integration (Honestly I skimmed through this one only cause I didn't need this)
- The next module is the Made To Order. Not exactly what I needed but after reading it I realized that was exactly every section in the system I need to alter to get my install customized how I needed it.
- The next module was the Reward/Points system. Great because it shows you how to modify the coupon system. Also how to display information on the admin side.
- The BackEnd Integration goes into creating a REST style system which any developer can easily take and adapt it into a SOAP or XMLRPC system. Instead of letting the reader figure out security for themselves the author provides his system.
- The final chapter in the book, has a FAQ which immediately answered a question I had. Including a note on testing your code without having to integrate it into the system.

I recommend this book to any PHP developer who wants to get started on altering Magento Commerce. When compared to the information that is currently out there this book is King!

I was skeptical about this book due to the reviews people had to say, after having some interaction with the software 3 weeks before purchasing I found most of this information pretty easy to sift through. Some was a little difficult to grasp though.

What readers need to realize with this book is that this was written for a class that is online through the company php|Architect. And if you research the class on Magento you have quite a few prerequisites before you can take the Magento class. To me, in this book what make's it hard is that the writers where not starting a book for absolute beginners, sure it helps for beginning Magento users, but assume you know PHP and the Zend Framework. If you are to make absolute 100% use of this book and comprehend some of the info, I suggest making sure you have a fairly decent knowledge in PHP and the Zend Framework which Magento is built on. If you do some research you can find the books that were created by the same publisheers (php|architect) taht should help ease the reading. I believe with a wide knowledge on this stuff this book would be me easier to read. Also try messing with Magento for a couple weeks before you purchase this book, that way you'll be able to understand some of the code and file structure.

All in all I'd give this 4. A 4 only because how vast this software is, there's only 171 pages including the index... With all the updates this software gets, this book can only cover so much. You'll still find yourself in the wiki/forum area looking for answers to something.

A better title for this book would be "Notes to fellow programmers". This books is short and that is great. As an experienced programmer you don't want to wade through pages of filler material. If you are an experienced programmer, new to Magento, this book will significantly ease your way into the code.

It is not a be all and end all of Magento development. I am sure such books will follow in time. However, as a previous reviewer suggested, it will cut down the time that it will take you to get upto speed.

If you expect hand holding you will be disappointed. Magento is at version 1.2 as I write this and things have been moving fast. This will provide you a start but from then on you will have to look at the latest code and figure out things for yourself.