Initializing extension basics

The way in which a new extension is built in Magento 2 is a bit different than it was in Magento 1. The major change is that all files are now included in the extension directory. This makes it easier to manage and remove.

The location of an extension is also different; there are no longer separate codepools as used in Magento 1 (core, community, and local). Depending on the way the extension is installed, the extension will be running from the vender directory when installed through Composer. For project-specific extensions, it is also possible to place them in app/code.

Getting ready

When developing an extension, it is advised to run Magento 2 in developer mode as this will give better error messages explaining what went wrong and make debugging a lot easier.

To display all PHP errors and activate developer mode, activate the display_errors setting in app/bootstrap.php and run the following command:

bin/magento deploy:mode:set developer

The code used in this chapter...