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I'm creating a module that requires a few things to be done (once only) when the module is installed. There may be a number of things that need to be done, but the most basic thing that I need to do is make an API call to a server to let the external server know that the module was installed, and to get a few updated configuration items.

I read this this question on stackoverflow however in my situation I truly am interested in executing code that has nothing to do with the database, fixtures, updating tables, etc. Also, just to be clear this module has no affect (effect?) on the front end. FYI, I've also read this spectacular article by Alan Storm, but this really only drives home the point in my mind that the install/upgrade scripts are not for executing random PHP.

In my mind, I have several possible ways to accomplish this:

  • I do what I fear is not a best practice and add some PHP to my setup/install script to execute this php
  • I create some sort of cronjob that will execute the task I need once only (not sure how this would work, but it seems like it might be a "creative" solution - of course if cron is not setup properly then this will fail, which is not good
  • I create a core_config_data flag ('mynamespace/mymodule/initialized') that I set once my script has run, and I check on every area of the adminhtml that my module touches (CMS/Pages and my own custom adminhtml controller). This seems like a good solution except for all of the extra overhead every time CMS/Pages is hit or my controller is hit, checking this core_config_data setting. The GOOD thing about this solution would be that if something were to fail with my API call, I can set this flag to false and it will run again, display the appropriate message, and continue to run until it succeeds (or have additional logic that will stop the initialization code after XX number of attempts)

Are any of these options the "best" way, and is there any sort of precedent for this somewhere, such as a respected extension or from Magento themselves?

Thanks in advance for your time!

Community
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Kevin Mitchell
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1 Answers1

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You raise an interesting question.

At the moment, I am not aware of a means to go about executing any arbitrary PHP on module installation, the obvious method (rightly/wrongly) would be to use the installer setup/upgrade script as per 1 of your Q.

2 and 3 seem like a more resource intensive approach, ie. needlessly checking on every page load (cache or not).

There is also the approach of using ./pear to install your module (assuming you packaged it using Magento). I had a very quick look through ./downloader/pearlib/php/pearmage.php but didn't see any lines which execute (vs copying files). I would have imagined this is the best place to execute something on install (other than 1 mentioned above).

But, I've never looked into this, so I'm fairly interested in other possible answers.

Ben Lessani
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  • Thanks for taking the time to respond @sonassi - really appreciate it! I honestly never thought of looking at the pear related magento connect files to look for a solution and to be honest I don't know much about how Magento Connection actually works in the background (I've never had much reason to and I've always assumed it was a straight forward process), but this gives me something else to look at. If you have any other ideas/thoughts on this I'd certainly love to hear them! – Kevin Mitchell Mar 14 '12 at 00:23