Question

I am making an internal Magento extension where I would like to add a few key figures to the customer overview, i.e. the /admin/customer/edit/id/XXX page:

How can that be achieved? I’ve tried looking in the knowledge base, etc. but the documentation on creating extensions seems to be quite limited.

The Magento version is 1.6.x.

Answer 1

The fastest way to start a module is with the module creator. One of the files it adds will be a config and to that add the following…

<config>
    <!-- ...existing XML here... -->
    <adminhtml>
        <layout>
            <updates>
                <your_module_name>
                    <file>yourmodule.xml</file>
                </your_module_name>
            </update>
        </layout>
    </adminhtml>
</config>

That will cause the file app/design/adminhtml/default/default/layout/yourmodule.xml to be loaded, to which you can add a single instruction…

<layout>
    <adminhtml_customer_edit>
        <reference name="customer_edit_tab_view">
            <block type="adminhtml/template" template="your/module/customer/view.phtml" name="your_module_view" />
        </reference>
    </adminhtml_customer_edit>
</layout>

And that will add (last part, I promise) a block to the customer edit page below the existing sections. It will show the contents of app/design/adminhtml/default/default/template/your/module/customer/view.phtml which you must create and fill with HTML, perhaps a bit like this…

<!-- Display a nice header around a box -->
<div class="entry-edit">
    <div class="entry-edit-head"><h4><?php echo $this->__('Your Module Info') ?></h4></div>
    <fieldset>
        Your information will show here.
    </fieldset>
    </div>
</div>

This way is safe, no upgrades can overwrite your additions because all the file paths will have your module name somewhere in them.