[TYPO3-dev] Magento to TYPO3

[Georg Ringer]

Hi Niels,

thanks for your statement!

> I personally think that integration of other systems functionality into 
> a extendable system isn't bad per-se, but the realization of these 
> 'bridges' often renders both sistems useless and/or currupt untill the 
> point of no-repair.

Magento supports and wants these brigdes! The services are not a hack 
and will be even supported more and more. They are not only for 
displaying products but for really more issues! It is possible to create 
invoices and manage all products from anywhere, e.g. ERP,...

> I can imagine that a Typo3 + SMF or Typo3 + Plone or 
> then Typo3 + Magneto will not make the burned kids feeling safe, so to 
> say.

Sorry I don't understand that. The difference with SMF is that IMO SMF 
doesn't offer this open architecture.

> The comment about SSO allready made our day, right? How are you 
> going to explain and implement, and explain the implementation of a 
> 'bridge' between Typo3 + Magneto? 

The implementation is very easy!

E.g. those 6 lines:

-----
$proxy = new SoapClient('http://magentohost/api/soap/?wsdl');
$sessionId = $proxy->login('apiUser', 'apiKey');
$filters = array(
     'sku' => array('like'=>'1234%')
);
$products = $proxy->call($sessionId, 'product.list', array($filters));
-----

You will get all products (as array) where the sku begins with "1234". 
It couldn't be really easier!


> Even though I don't agree with Franz, 
> I do understand the concern that Magneto will (like a Magnet :-) suck 
> developer-resources from tt_product, which would be bad, because then we 
> don't have a minimal kickstarting product-extension anymore. 

IMO not too many developers are developing tt_products but this is 
really IMO!

> Sometimes 
> minimal is sufficient, and sometimes it's even better than the bloated 
> system. In which way do you think Magneto renders tt_product obsolete? 

I never said that tt_products is obsolete! If you need a shop for 10 
products, of course it will be better to use tt_products.

In my case I needed a new version of a shop for a big existing shop 
which was an old and hacked tt_products. There are not real content 
pages and so I could choose between tt_products and magento and the 
decission wasn't very easy because of the lack of experience with 
Magento but I don't regret it!

> In which market are they competing, anyway? Could you possibly configure 
> your product the TS-way (means: does Magneto have TS-integration)?

Please take a look at the magento website [1] or the Feature list [2] 
but IMO it is like TYPO3 <> Joomla with Magento <> tt_products. It is a 
complete different kind of coding world and a complete different view.

Of course Magento doesn't have any TS! It is also far more complicated 
to integrate TYPO3 inside Magento because TYPO3 just doesn't have this API!

>  From my experience in Software-Development the 'bridges' though, are 
> bad^TM. Too much cooks, too much styles, too different concepts, and you 
> try to mangle them by pure force together. 

No one is forced and as I said above, the bridges are done by the 
Magento developers to connect Magento with the outside of the world!

>  How are you going to prevent
> version-madness and incomaptibilties? 

Of course Magento is always free to change the own API but this won't 
happen too much because this wouldn't be good for them either.

My extension will be of course at forge, so everyone is invited to help 
there.

Do the people of Magneto care
> about Typo? Will they change their core for easying integration into 
> other systems, especially Typo3? Will they make any compromises for 
> Typo3 if the time of getting rid of the old useless code?

As above! IMO they care about TYPO3 as much about WP or any other CMS 
tool. Which compromises you talk about?

Of course you can write also new modules for Magento, it is open source 
too!!

> There are a lot of questions open, and even though I understand your 
> enthusiasm, I understand Franz's protectionism also.

Again: If someone wants to use tt_products, he is free to go! Magento is 
getting stronger and stronger and the connection will also help TYPO3 a 
lot! I see this connection more like an integration of Google Maps or 
even like Mootools, JQuery (of course not identical!) but these are 
stand-alone codes which enrich a website.


Georg
[1] http://www.magentocommerce.com/
[2] http://www.magentocommerce.com/features