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SilverStripe Documentation

Welcome to the SilverStripe Developer Documentation. This website is aimed at website developers looking to learn how to build and manage web applications with the SilverStripe Framework.

Versions:

This document contains information about a future release and not the current stable version (3). Be aware that information on this page may change and API's may not be stable for production use.

Getting Started with SilverStripe

Before you start developing your first web application, you'll need to install the latest version of SilverStripe onto a web server. The Getting Started section will show you what server requirements you will need to meet and how to download and install SilverStripe.

To check out the features that SilverStripe offers without installing it, read the Feature Overview and play with the interactive demo website.

Getting support

SilverStripe has an wide range of options for getting support. The forums and IRC channel are the best places to talk and discuss questions and problems with the community. There are also several other websites with SilverStripe documentation to make use of.

  • The API Documentation contains technical reference and class information.
  • The User Help website contains documentation related to working within the CMS.

New features, API changes and the development roadmap for the product are discussed on the core mailinglist along with UserVoice.

Building your first SilverStripe Web application

Once you have completed the Getting Started guide and have got SilverStripe installed and running, the following Tutorials will lead through the basics and core concepts of SilverStripe.

Make sure you know the basic concepts of PHP5 before attempting to follow the tutorials. If you have not programmed with PHP5 be sure to read the Introduction to PHP5 (zend.com).

SilverStripe Concepts

The Developer Guides contain more detailed documentation on certain SilverStripe topics, 'how to' examples and reference documentation.

  • Model and Databases

    Learn how SilverStripe manages database tables, ways to query your database and how to publish data.

  • Templates and Views

    This guide showcases the SilverStripe template engine and learn how to build your own themes.

  • Controllers

    Controllers form the backbone of your SilverStripe application. They handle routing URLs to your templates.

  • Forms

    Capture user information through Forms. This guide will work through how to create SilverStripe forms, adding and modifying fields and how to handle form submissions.

  • Configuration

    SilverStripe provides several ways to store and modify your application settings. Learn about site wide settings and the YAML based configuration system.

  • Extending SilverStripe

    Understand the ways to modify the built-in functionality through Extensions, Subclassing and Dependency Injection.

  • Testing

    Deploy robust applications by bundling Unit and Behavior tests with your application code and modules.

  • Debugging

    Learn how to identify errors in your application and best practice for logging application errors.

  • Performance

    Make your applications faster by learning how to write more scalable code and ways to cache your important information.

  • Security

    This guide covers user authentication, the permission system and how to secure your code against malicious behaviors

  • Email

    Send HTML and plain text email from your SilverStripe application.

  • Integration and Web Services

    Integrate other web services within your application or make your SilverStripe data available.

  • Search

    Provide your users with advanced search functionality.

  • i18n

    Display templates and PHP code in different languages based on the preferences of your website users.

  • Files

    Upload, manage and manipulate files and images.

  • Customising the Admin Interface

    Extend the admin view to provide custom behavior or new features for CMS and admin users.

  • Execution Pipeline

    An overview of the steps involved in delivering a SilverStripe web page.

  • Command Line Interface

    Automate SilverStripe, run Cron Jobs or sync with other platforms through the Command Line Interface.

  • Cookies and Sessions

    Save state information using the Cookie class and the Session class.

Contributing to SilverStripe

The SilverStripe Framework, Content Management System and related websites are open source and welcome community contributions.

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