Question

I know Magento orders can be attained with
$orders = Mage::getResourceModel('sales/order_collection');
but then how can I get the information for each order? The information I need most per order is: SKUs purchased, date purchased, money spent on each item, and discounts, if any.

All help is greatly appreciated and I always accept an answer!

Answer 1

Not a direct answer

Mage::getResourceModel('sales/order_collection'); retrieves collection of orders (sales_flat_order)

SKU is stored in sales_flat_order_item

From order you can get order items using method getAllVisibleItems (it will retrieve respective sales_flat_order_item) see the definition in Mage_Sales_Model_Order

$orders = Mage::getResourceModel('sales/order_collection');
foreach($orders as $order){
    $items = $order->getAllVisibleItems();
    foreach($items as $item){
        $sku = $item->getSku();
    }
}

The point is like that, you have to modify it by yourself.
For the money spent on each item, you can also take a look at sales_flat_order_item