Zen Cart Documentation
Storeowner Docs
Developer Docs
Developer Docs
Getting Started
Developer Environment
Architecture
Auto Inclusion System
Constants in Zen Cart
Creating an Observer Class (HOW-TO example)
Extra Folders
Init System
Notifier Report for Zen Cart 2.2.0
Notifiers - List of for Zen Cart 2.2.0
Observer/Notifier System
Product Types
Program Flow
Admin
Admin Request Sanitization
Admin cron jobs
Admin Templating Capability
Building a Home Page widget
Building a Report
Creating a new Admin menu item
Sorting an Admin menu
View Builders
A DTO to define Tabular data
Data Filters
Data Formatters
Data Sources
Derived Items Manager
Table Controllers
Storefront
Bootstrap in Zen Cart
Building a Form
Displaying Custom Fields
Font Awesome in Zen Cart
jQuery in Zen Cart
Template Settings and the $tplSetting object
Modules
Shipping Modules
Testing PayPal Modules
Order Total Modules
Cloning a Shipping Module
Cloning a Shipping Module (1.5.7 and below)
Adding Configuration Values to a Module
Cloning a Payment Module
Cloning a Payment Module (1.5.7 and below)
Plugins
Encapsulated Plugins
Encapsulated Plugin Directory Structure
Encapsulated Plugin Manifest Files
Encapsulated Plugin Installer Language Files
Encapsulated Plugin Installer Classes
Encapsulated Plugin Class Autoloading
Encapsulated Plugin SQL Installation
Converting a Plugin to the Encapsulated Architecture
Upgrading Encapsulated Plugins
Plugin Authoring Tips
Checking Zen Cart Version in a Plugin
Adding Configuration Settings
Plugin Language File Loading
Admin HTML Head Content
Adding Help to an Admin Plugin
Upgrading 1.3.x Plugins for Zen Cart 1.5
Upgrading Plugins for PHP 8 and Zen Cart 1.5.8+
Upgrading 2.0.0 Plugins for Zen Cart 2.1
Adopting an Orphaned Plugin
Updating Plugins for Newer PHP Versions
Using GitHub for Plugin Source and Documentation
Rules for Plugins
Database
Adding a child table to the products table
Adding a field to the customers table
Adding a field to the products table
Adding a Status History Record to an Order
Audit tool
Creating or Modifying a table
Missing Products Description records
Modifying a field in the products table
Products and Categories at the Same Level
Querying the Database
Schema
Zen Cart 2.2.0 Schema
Zen Cart 2.1.0 Schema
Zen Cart 2.0.0 Schema
Zen Cart 1.5.8 Schema
Zen Cart 1.5.7 Schema
Zen Cart 1.5.6 Schema
Zen Cart 1.5.5 Schema
Zen Cart 1.5.4 Schema
Zen Cart 1.5.1 Schema
Zen Cart 1.3.9 Schema
Renaming Database Table-Prefixes
Languages
Introduction
Language Files - Developer Information on Array based Language files
Language Files - New vs Legacy in 1.5.8+
Admin UI Translation
Creating a Language Pack
Language Constant logic
Legacy Language Files
Creating a define based language pack (DEPRECATED - 1.5.7 and below)
Updating an Older Translation (DEPRECATED - 1.5.7 and below)
What to Translate
PHP
Configuration Data Validation - About
PHP Idioms
PHP Updates
PHP Version Changes and Deprecations
Release History
Testing
Contributing
Introduction
Change Guidelines
Coding Standards
Github Workflow + Pull Requests
Bug Reporting
Notices
Branching
Release Process
Pre-Release Notes
Dependency Checks
Prerequisites
Initial Steps
Version Stamping
Release Tagging
Additional Release Tasks
Server Manager
Release Links
Release Manifests
Post-Release Tasks
Release Log
Implementation Guide
Adding Team Members
Developer Docs
Admin
View Builders
Data Formatters
Data Formatters
Formatting tabular data for output
Last modified May 27, 2026 by Ian Wilson
(e07ac859)
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