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  1. #1
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    Default Best practice for finding out 'what does what'?

    I'm not too bad with ZC now, gradually getting to grips with CSS and the whole overrides thing.

    However, what trips me up all of the time is know which modules do what, or in other words, where a piece of code is being generated.

    Is there a best practice, a plug-in, or any kind of method to nail down which piece of content was generated by which bit of code?

    Obviously the filenames help, but there often quite a few to guess from.

    I can use the developrs tool kit to find specific words and phrases of course, but I often end up typing in 'hello' and seeing where it turns up in the page :-(

    Perhaps it's just about getting more experienced, but I can believe one does that by guessing and bumbling along.

    Any help gratefull received.

    Thanks
    Steve

    www.in-the-spirit-shop.co.uk
    www.wheredidyougetit.co.uk
    www.towertothepeople.co.uk

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Best practice for finding out 'what does what'?

    No magic bullet I'm afraid. One just follows the flow of the code and over time builds up a feel for what type of files do what (not 100% consistent but heading that way).
    Kuroi Web Design and Development | Twitter

    (Questions answered in the forum only - so that any forum member can benefit - not by personal message)

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Best practice for finding out 'what does what'?

    One suggestion here I can give is to have some site wide flag as Debug=Tru or False and in case its True, which all files are getting called on any page(site or admin) should be shown at the boom
    Just my two cents!
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  4. #4
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    Default Re: Best practice for finding out 'what does what'?

    Quote Originally Posted by superprg View Post
    One suggestion here I can give is to have some site wide flag as Debug=Tru or False and in case its True, which all files are getting called on any page(site or admin) should be shown at the boom
    Just my two cents!
    Could you give an example of that please. A little beyond me but it sounds like it might help.

  5. #5
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    Default Re: Best practice for finding out 'what does what'?

    I will post an example when I get
    I can see that in my application in ASP.NET shop
    where I have this option to set it to Debug mode as ON and then I am gettting list of all the files getting called to render this page along with the variables which are getting used in the entire page generation
    Tutorials on Zen Cart
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  6. #6
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    Default Re: Best practice for finding out 'what does what'?

    PHP itself includes a lot of help functions.

    To show al included files for example you can use get-included-files():
    http://us.php.net/manual/en/function...uded-files.php

    Also printing (i.e. using print_r()) super globals often helps debugging (http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/languag...s.superglobals) or all contants (http://us.php.net/manual/en/function...-constants.php).

  7. #7
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    Default Re: Best practice for finding out 'what does what'?

    There's a brief guide to program-flow here:
    http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=378
    .

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