How to keep extensions from Magento Connect up2date without connect-manager?

Question

This is not a question about solving a technical problem, it's about getting some input how to realize my idea in the "best" way. ;)

Current situation:

I support a shop that uses a lot of extensions. Most of them are maintained at Github, so they can easily updated via modman/composer ... BUT ... there are some, that are only updated at Magento Connect.

What i have done till now - and it's really annoying - was a periodic check at magento connect, download latest version, hosted or update them on Github (or Bitbucket private repo for payed once) and deployed them via modman/composer.

Aims:

I don't need a out-of-the-box upgrade process, it would be more then enough when a get notification about new version without visiting magento connect manually and without using Magento connect manager.

Plan:

Build a simple as possible extensions that notifies me about new releases at Magento Connect.

Idea:

• gather installed extension from Magentos merged XML
• store them in a DB-Table (name, version, ...)
• add a field to (manually) store Magento Connect-URL once
• add a cronjob that looks for newer releases (1)
• add a admin notification message, if an update is available

Note (1): long time planned - w/o no idea to realize - but today i found a possibility howto grab all required info. See: Download the magento connect extensions list

I still have to download lates release, update my Git/BB-Repo and deploy it, but it would save a lot of time to periodically check Magento Connect.

Question:

I assume this idea is interessting for all that rely on Magento connect-extensions and don't want to use Magento connect manager ... as long it's not necessary.

Before i start coding, I just want to ask you for smarter ideas!

Thanks in advance for your input.

Answer 1

Extension is not complete yet, but it does what I need at the moment.

Some things can be changed, but it works for now ... to do's

• accept extension key AND full connect url
• cronjob missing
• add system config
• add admin notification
• support for GIT repos (?)
• ...

---

Edit:

Because of Magento Connect to close on September 15 added dataset for all extension that are still downloadable ...

^{Download: https://github.com/sreichel/magento-Sr_VersionCheck}

Answer 2

Your overview specs for this concept sound interesting and it would be good to know the final result of your extension :)

My thoughts on a starting point for you below...

I'm not sure if you are using Magento 1 or 2.

I would suggest looking into the implementation of the n98-magerun plugin/module Hypernode. With Hypernode there is a command to check for updated versions to extensions:

  n98-magerun hypernode:modules:list-updates

The GitHub repository for this module: https://github.com/Hypernode/hypernode-magerun/

A quick solution to your issue would be to run the hypernode command as a cron and have it email you the results periodically but I sense you want a more comprehensive solution.