A rushed, incomplete and poorly thought out book
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.
Need a quick run through the system?
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!
Poorly written
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.
The author/publisher obviously just want to make a quick buck
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....
