How do you database access (I/O) to/from Magento Commerce?

Question

So, I want to import, export and modify the database. I have read that I have to do that by XML, but I don't really understand their doc system and I haven't found any good tutorials out there that explain this. I am slowly reading the very expensive and short book which is somewhat answering my questions, but I crave more.

As a second question, I want to have a order system where I can send out information or emails with my own code. I assume this would be some type of plug-in that would override or be called at a certain time. Any info would be helpful.

Answer 1

Some parts of the magento data can be imported/exported via the backend (System->Import/Export), namely products and customers.

If you want to deal with the complete DB - use your DB tool of choice (I prefer mysqldump).

When dealing with exported CSV.. use OpenOffice, from my experience it deals better with the separation characters than Excel.

As for your second question - as far as I understood, you will have to develop a module if you want to do something different than the existing functionality and keep the original mail functions. If you don't want to/have to keep the original functions, you can opt to overwrite the module, which is much easier as far as I can see. Google search for "overriding magento module" should turn up atleast one decent tutorial.

greetz

Answer 2

I found what I was looking for here:

(on magento site: Resources -> Magento Core API -> Product API or whichever API you want)

The problem is there is no Order API yet (or none that I've seen)

http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/doc/webservices-api/api/catalog_product#examples

This details how you'd write an external php script and obtain,edit or delete products (or anything else with an API).

Modules still look daunting, but I am reading through the (very thin) magento book (the only one available).

I hope this helps someone else.