Attention

TYPO3 v9 has reached its end-of-life September 30th, 2021 and is not maintained by the community anymore. Looking for a stable version? Use the version switch on the top left.

You can order Extended Long Term Support (ELTS) here: TYPO3 ELTS.

Coding Guidelines

Extbase and Fluid follow the principle of Convention over Configuration. That means that many tasks will work automatically if you respect certain naming conventions for classes, files and method names. Furthermore, this principle improves the consistency and readability of your code. Thus it is much easier for extension developers to understand how unknown extensions (based on Extbase) work, because the structure is always the same und common tasks are solved the same way.

With Extbase and Fluid we set quite an emphasis on the intuitive and logical naming scheme of classes, methods and variables. Our goal is to provide the source code as readable as possible, because the names are already reflecting what the code does. It even happens that we change a name or identifier several times during development for having it intuitive for as many developers as possible.

You will notice that this is a big difference to the previous TYPO3 v4 (where the names are often abbreviated and inconclusive) making the daily work and understanding of the code much easier.

Generally, classes are written in UpperCamelCase and methods and variables are written in lowerCamelCase. Underscores (_) are only used in class names for the separation of the namespace, in methods and variables they are generally not used. In addition, the name must be detailed and meaningful; abbreviations are to avoid.

Folder structure

Every extension based on Extbase contains certain folders in the main directory:

Classes

Here resides the complete source code for the extension. Only PHP files are allowed, each one containing exactly one class or interface. All classes (or interfaces) are loaded via the autoloader mechanism when needed.

Configuration

Here is the configuration of the extension located, that means flexform configuration, TCA definitions and TypoScript files. Subfolder can be created when they are needed or helpful.

Documentation

Contains the documentation of the extension. The subfolders are named according to the following schema: [name of the document]/[format]/[language]. Therefore you will find the extension manual normally either in the folder Manual/DocBook/en or in Manual/OpenOffice/en/manual.sxw.

Resources

Here there are the static resources of the extension. This means all files which are not PHP files but are necessary for the conduction of the extension. This might be code from libraries, template files, images, css files and so on.

It is distinguished between public (Public/) and private (Private/) resources. In the folder Private/ there is a .htaccess file, which is blocking direct access to non public files.

Resources/Private

Contains non public resources of the extension.

Resources/Public

Contains public resources of the extension.

Within these two folder the authors of the extension can choose the structure freely, but we recommend the following structure:

Resources/Public/Media

This is a good place for images, CSS files or media files, which are delivered directly to the client.

Resources/Private/Templates

Here are the default Fluid templates for the extension (see also chapter 8).

Resources/Private/PHP

Contains PHP code, which is not compatible to the naming conventions like external PHP libraries, procedural code and so on. If you run TYPO3 in composer mode, you should define the autoloading for said folder in the composer.json of your extension.

If you don't run TYPO3 in composer mode, the autoloader of TYPO3 will automatically search for php files in all extensions and you don't need to act yourself.

Tests

All unit tests are found here. The structure should be the same as in Classes. All test classes should end with Test.

ext_emconf.php

Contains the configuration for the extension manager of TYPO3 like metadata as the name, the description and the author of the extension.

ext_icon.gif

The icon of the extension, which will be visible in the Extension Manager. It should have a size of 18 x 16 px.

ext_localconf.php

In this file there is the configuration of the Frontend Plugins, which are offered by the extension (see appendix B, "Configuration of Frontend Plugins").

ext_tables.php

In this file you will put configuration regarding the backend. For more see appendix B, "Configuration of Frontend Plugins".

ext_tables.sql

This is a file with SQL commands for the definition of the database tables.

File and class names

Class names in Extbase are composed with the following parts:

1. the vendor prefix. For example, if your name is Example, then this part could be Ex.

2. the name of the extension in UpperCamelCase. For example, if the extension-key is blog_example, then this part of the classname is BlogExample.

3. the path within the Classes/ folder down to the folder, where the file containing the class resides.

In table A-1 you see some naming examples for file and class names.

Table A-1: Examples for class names

classname	extension key	folder
TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Exception	extbase	extbase/Classes/Exception.php
TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Mvc\Controller\ActionController	extbase	extbase/Classes/Mvc/Controller/ActionController.php
Ex\BlogExample\Domain\Model\Post	blog_example	blog_example/Classes/Domain/Model/Post.php

Interfaces end with Interface, for example TYPO3\CMS\Extbase\Mvc\RequestInterface. With abstract classes the last part of the name always begins with Abstract, for example TYPO3\CMSExtbase\Mvc\Controller\AbstractController.