Module Best Practices Question (EE2.0)

I am working on building a classifieds module for ee2.0 and it will be from a CodeIgniter application. Since this will need categories, entries (listings), users, etc should I use the included channel system? Or would it be better to use my own tables for this? I can see benefits of doing it both ways but want to stay true to EE’s system and change as little as possible.

Well ExpressionEngine itself can power a classifieds system without a custom module to do so. You would do exactly what you mentioned and utilize the channels, categories and membership. Why are you wanting to build a module to do this? If anything I would suggest building an add-on package to help facilitate the system you want to build by adding in the functions that EE cannot do out of the box. Those functions depend on what you want the system to do

Thanks for the reply Erik. I was looking through the documentation but only seen information about modules and extensions. So maybe I am just showing my lack of knowledge of how EE is designed. :(

My idea was it would need to have custom code as I want to integrate with payment gateways.

Thanks for the reply Erik. I was looking through the documentation but only seen information about modules and extensions. So maybe I am just showing my lack of knowledge of how EE is designed. :(

Have you built any sites in EE before? Are you a CI developer starting to dive into EE with 2.0?

My idea was it would need to have custom code as I want to integrate with payment gateways.

Depending on how you want to integrate the gateways you may not even need to dive into add-on development.

Have you built any sites in EE before? Are you a CI developer starting to dive into EE with 2.0?

Just a sample site I am building on localhost and a not active site built on the older version. But I am very much a newbie to EE.

Depending on how you want to integrate the gateways you may not even need to dive into add-on development.

Is it possible to elaborate more on that?

Have you built any sites in EE before? Are you a CI developer starting to dive into EE with 2.0?

Just a sample site I am building on localhost and a not active site built on the older version. But I am very much a newbie to EE.

I gotcha. ExpressionEngine can actually build/power a “web application” pretty well without having to spend time writing the controllers and models all on your own. The channels module is very very powerful and is the backbone of ExpressionEngine. I suggest living in those docs for a little while and thinking about how you could create a classifieds site with just EE out of the box. Then fill in the voids after you’ve approached it that way. If you are going to write a classifieds app outside of EE, just use CI.

Depending on how you want to integrate the gateways you may not even need to dive into add-on development.

Is it possible to elaborate more on that?

Hmm, not really. It just depends on how you would want to process payments and whatnot. Are you tapping into an API of some sort?

I’m with Eric on this one. Find out as much as you can about what EE can do out of the box. You’ll be amazed. Then you can start taking a look at the api and the classes available to work with. This only gets cooler with EE2 + CI.

Personally I try to do as much as possible with native EE functionality. My only go to add ons are the Solspace User and Freeform modules. I’ve been thinking of EE as more of a framework than CMS for a while now.

Jim

Is Solspace User-module available for 2.0?