Let's start with creating the plugin.
Head over to the directory <shopware root>/custom/plugins.
The plugin's directory must be named after the plugin, so in this scenario SwagBundleExample is used throughout the full tutorial.
Each plugin is defined by a composer.json file, which contains a plugin's name, version, requirements and many more meta-information.
Those of you familiar with composer might have figured out what's going on here already:
Each plugin you write can be used by composer just like any other composer package - thus every property mentioned here can be used
in your plugin's composer.json as well.
Create this file inside your new directory SwagBundleExample and head over to the next step.
So what do you need in your plugin's meta information? Each composer package comes with a technical name as its unique identifier if you were to publish your plugin using composer. Note: Don't worry - just because your plugin is basically a composer package, it won't be published because of that. That's still up to you, you'll easily be able to do so though.
{
"name": "swag/bundle-example"
}The naming pattern is the very same like the one recommended by composer:
It consists of vendor name and project name, separated by
/
The vendor name can also be your vendor prefix, Shopware for example uses swag here.
The project name should be separated by a -, often referred to as kebab-case.
So, what else would you need in general?
A description, a version, the used license model and probably the author.
After having a look at the composer schema once more, your composer.json could look like this:
{
"name": "swag/bundle-example",
"description": "Bundle example",
"version": "v1.0.0",
"license": "MIT",
"authors": [
{
"name": "shopware AG",
"role": "Manufacturer"
}
]
}All of those values being used in the example are mostly used by composer. Yet, there are plenty more values, that are required by Shopware 6, so let's have a look at them as well.
First of all you can define a type, which has to be shopware-platform-plugin here.
{
...
"type": "shopware-platform-plugin"
}Your plugin won't be considered to be a valid plugin if you do not set this value.
The next value would be the autoload property, which works exactly like described
on the documentation linked above.
In short: You're defining your plugin's location + namespace in there.
This allows you to structure your plugin code the way you want.
Since, as mentioned earlier in this tutorial, every plugin is also a composer package, we want it to look like most other composer packages do.
Their directory naming is mostly lowercase and most of them store their main code into a src directory, just like our Shopware platform code itself.
While you're free to structure your plugin in whichever way you want, we recommend you to do it this way.
{
...
"autoload": {
"psr-4": {
"Swag\\BundleExample\\": "src/"
}
},
}Also required is the related namespace you want to use in your plugin.
Usually you'd want it to look something like this: YourVendorPrefix\YourPluginName
Last but not least is the extra property, which can fit ANY value.
Shopware 6 is using it for fetching a few more meta information, such as a copyright, a label and a plugin-icon path.
Another important value is the fully qualified class name (later referred to as 'FQCN') of your plugin's base class, so Shopware 6 knows where to look for your plugin's base class.
This is necessary, since due to your freedom to setup your plugin structure yourself, Shopware 6 also has no clue where your plugin's base class could be.
{
...
"extra": {
"shopware-plugin-class": "Swag\\BundleExample\\BundleExample",
"copyright": "(c) by shopware AG",
"label": {
"de-DE": "Beispiel für Shopware",
"en-GB": "Example for Shopware"
}
}
}Here's what the final composer.json looks like once all values described were set.
{
"name": "swag/bundle-example",
"description": "Bundle example",
"version": "v1.0.0",
"license": "MIT",
"authors": [
{
"name": "shopware AG",
"role": "Manufacturer"
}
],
"type": "shopware-platform-plugin",
"autoload": {
"psr-4": {
"Swag\\BundleExample\\": "src/"
}
},
"extra": {
"shopware-plugin-class": "Swag\\BundleExample\\BundleExample",
"copyright": "(c) by shopware AG",
"label": {
"de-DE": "Beispiel für Shopware",
"en-GB": "Example for Shopware"
}
}
}In order to get a fully functional plugin running, we still need the plugin's base class.
As you probably noticed from the composer.json, our main source is going to be in a src directory with the namespace Swag\BundleExample.
So that's also where the plugin's base class will be at, so create a new file named after your plugin in the <plugin root>/src directory.
In this example, it will be named BundleExample:
<?php declare(strict_types=1);
namespace Swag\BundleExample;
use Shopware\Core\Framework\Plugin;
class BundleExample extends Plugin
{
}Your plugin base class always has to extend from Shopware\Core\Framework\Plugin in order to work properly.
The namespace and class name are set as defined in the composer.json. That's it for now, the plugin would already be recognized
by Shopware 6 and is installable.
Now it's time to check if everything was done correctly until this point. First you have to refresh the plugins.
./bin/console plugin:refreshTry to install your new plugin in the Pluginmanager in the Administration. You can find the Pluginmanager under "Settings" > "System" > "Plugins".
If you're more into using the CLI, you can also execute the following command from inside your development template root.
./bin/console plugin:install --activate --clearCache BundleExampleIf everything was done right, it should install without any issues.
Head over to the next step to create new database tables for your plugin using migrations.