Tutorials for Magento and Joomla! - Yireo

Using MageBridge Product Connectors

Within MageBridge, connectors are used to do all kinds of things: With Product Connectors you can do something in Joomla! when a Magento product is being sold. This opens up for tons of opportunities, like selling access to DOCman downloads or adding a customer to a certain JomSocial group. Here are some general guidelines for Product Connectors.

Finding product connectors

Connectors are shipped by default with MageBridge and you don't need extra effort to install them. In the future, MageBridge will support an installation mechanism to easily add new connectors as well.

When you browse to the MageBridge component in the Joomla! Administrator, you will find a listing of all available connectors under the link Connectors. By selecting the type, you can filter the list to see only Product Connectors.

Not all connectors are enabled by default. For instance, the Nooku connector only becomes active once the Nooku component has been installed. Once a connector is enabled, you can publish or depublish it.

Which Product Connectors are there?

Check our whitepaper on various Joomla! extensions for a listing of MageBridge Product Connectors with third party Joomla! extensions.

Creating a product in Magento

The whole point of using Product Connectors is that you sell a product in Magento, and as soon as the checkout has succeeded you send a message to Joomla! to do something. To set this up, you will first need to configure a product in Magento. There are no special guidelines here, but if you don't want to sell a physical product we recommend configuring a Virtual Product for this purpose.

Also activate the proper event-forwarding in the MageBridge-module in Magento. Browse to CMS > MageBridge Settings > Settings > Event Forwarding and enable the event "checkout_onepage_controller_success_action".

Adding a Product Connection

Once the product has been added in Magento, it's time to make a connection between that product and the action you want to undertake in Joomla!. To do this, browse to Product Connections within the MageBridge component in the Joomla! backend, and hit the New button.

You should give the Product Connection a label, but this is for internal use only and will not be displayed to your customers. Next, you need to select the Magento product and make the right configuration for the Product Connector.

Each Product Connector might have it's own way of configuring: The DOCman connector only requires you to select a DOCman group in the dropdown list, but a membership connector also allows you to determine the period for which the customer gets the membership. The possibilities offered by the Product Connector are only inspired by the options of the corresponding extension. For instance, DOCman doesn't deal with access for a specific amount of time, there for the connector doesn't offer this functionality either.