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When to develop an custom extension?

If some requirements while building up a website does not fit into the functionality offered by TYPO3 core or any of the existing extensions in TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER) then someone can think of developing a custom extension. By making an custom extension it's possible to extend the TYPO3 core or other extensions from TER.

Developing an extension quickly

An extension is made up of several directories and files as described here. Making new extension manually is bit time consuming job but TER has a great extension called as "Kickstarter" with which a new extension can be kick-started within a few minutes. 

Maintaining quality of an extension

After extension is been kick-started a developer can modify the extension files further to match the requirements. While doing this developer has to follow extension development guidelines and coding standards. Following are some of the important guidelines and standards.

• Follow the proper TYPO3 Extension Naming Conventions and TYPO3 Coding Guidelines
• Use as much TYPO3 Core API as possible. e.g. use library functions from t3lib_div, t3lib_BEfunc etc.
• Follow security guidelines
• Make extension flexible (to not hard code variables) using TypoScript and extension manager configuration
• Avoid making XCLASS of TYPO3 core classes and first check for the available hooks.
• Review extension for the performance optimization. e.g. do NOT turn off TYPO3 caching by setting $GLOBALS['TSFE']->set_no_cache();

Extension development using Extbase and Fluid

There is heavy development going on for developing TYPO3 v5.0 which is based on FLOW3. The MVC framework (extbase) and much more advanced templating engine (fluid) has been back-ported to TYPO3 4.3 so that people can start getting feel of TYPO3 5.0 and develop extensions using "extbase" and "fluid" which can be easily adjusted in TYPO3 5.0 with little changes in the extension code. Read news post on typo3.org about release of Extbase and Fluid

Benefits of Extbase and Fuild:

• Develop extension for TYPO3 4 which will work in TYPO3 5 (Phoenix) with little modifications in the code
• Fully object oriented programming and domain driven design approach can be used
• Powerful MVC framework which make extension development much faster as it takes care of most of the small things and developer can focus more on developing the complex business logic. e.g. developer need not write SQL queries for normal database access and just use the magic methods!
• Strict naming conventions keeps the code much cleaner and structured.
• Using fluid template engine makes the templating much easy. e.g. no time spending on writing markers and subparts and programming them individually.
• Powerful kickstarter (extbase_kickstarter) for creating new extension very quickly.

Lelesys is specialized in developing TYPO3 extensions using both approaches "pibase" (old way of developing extension) and Extbase (new and advanced). Around 50+ custom extensions (not in TER) are developed by Lelesys  which includes Front End plugins (also including Ajax based on ExtJS, jQuery), Backend Modules (including use of ExtJS framework), authentication service, click menu items, content rendering on mobile devices

• TYPO3 CMS Services
• TYPO3 Business Intranet
• Enterprise Applications
• Mobile Applications
• TYPO3 Facebook Apps
• Integration with cloud
• Enterprise Consulting
• Small business solutions
• Product development