Important

You are browsing the documentation for version 3.1 of OroCommerce, OroCRM and OroPlatform, which is no longer maintained. Read version 5.1 (the latest LTS version) of the Oro documentation to get up-to-date information.

See our Release Process documentation for more information on the currently supported and upcoming releases.

Custom Oro Application

No two businesses are alike. This motto is a part of Oro products philosophy and this is why flexibility is one of the key principles that drive architecture in Oro. Depending on what you are planning to build, you can create your custom application with minimum functions starting either with OroPlatform, or OroCRM, or OroCommerce application as a baseline. No matter what is your starting point, there is no difference in the customization process.

Application Repository and Installation

Before you start working on a new project, it is important to have version control system in place. The easiest way to start is to fork application repository of OroPlatform, OroCRM or OroCommerce on GitHub.

Once code repository is ready, please follow installation instructions.

Note

Newly created application repository should be used instead of the https://github.com/orocrm/crm-application.git

When your application is up and running, you can use development mode to work on customizations. In order to warm up the application cache in development mode please run:

$php bin/console cache:clear --env=dev

To access application in development mode, add index_dev.php to the base URL (example: http://orocrm.example.com/index_dev.php).

Application Custom Code

Oro application structure is based on Symfony Standard Edition and we highly recommend to follow Symfony Best Practices for any custom application that you build on top of OroPlatform, OroCRM, or OroCommerce.

In the root folder of your application, there is an src folder. Use it as a working directory for your custom project and put your custom code there. Like in Symfony applications, all custom code in Oro application is organized in bundles - modules that group application functionality (see Symfony Bundle System for best practice of module structure and design).

Note

Please note that Oro application has several differences compared to Symfony Standard Edition.

Typically, to create a custom application you may follow the common steps:

  1. Create a bundle

  2. Introduce new entity types that represent your business data structure and add related features

  3. Customize existing functionality (menu, workflow, existing entities etc.)

Application Deployment

Oro applications are open source and may be deployed to the on-premise environments. Deployment method could be different depending on organization requirements and infrastructure. You can design your custom deployment process, noting the following recommendations:

  1. Take into account recommendations in Symfony Application Deployment documentation

  2. Lock all dependencies with composer.lock before taking the code to production

  3. Warm up the application cache in production mode

  4. Disable access to index_dev.php

  5. Configure crontab and run web socket server

Oro applications are scalable.

Note

As an alternative to the on-premise deployment, when you created your application following recommendations above, you can put your application into OroCloud. Please contact us to get more information.