4 Tips For Developers To Improve Custom Code in SugarCloud

Whether you're a beginner or a pro, building code customizations in SugarCloud can be a challenge. While SugarCloud supports most customizations, there are some key things you need to know before you get started. In this post, we compiled four tips from SugarCRM to help you write flawless custom code in SugarCloud.

1. Get Familiar With SugarCRM’s Supported Customizations

SugarCloud supports several configuration tools that can help you along your Sugar coding journey. Some of these include: 

• Studio
• Module Builder
• Sugar Logic (such as calculated fields and dependent dropdowns)
• Sugar BPM

You can use these out-of-the-box tools to create configurations within your Sugar instance, or you can build supported custom code such as logic hooks, integrations, scheduled jobs, custom REST API endpoints, and sidecar views. While SugarCloud supports a wide variety of customizations, you should know that customizing the Sugar application code (anything outside of the custom directory) directly is prohibited.

2. Ask Professor M

Professor M’s (Matt Marum) School for Gifted Coders is a great resource for testing code and building up your skills. You can access the Github for Professor M’s School here. From there you can download the latest release, install it via the module loader and populate the data. Moreover, you can contribute to the repository and run tests via Travis CI.

3. Seek Advice 

The Developer section in Sugar Community is a great resource to find tips, tricks, and feedback on your SugarCloud related questions. Within the Developer section, you can find development-focused blog articles, tutorials, and ask questions to other developers. 

Here’s an example of the type of advice you can receive in Sugar Community:

Think you’re a Sugar expert? Then contribute and share your expertise with others.

4. Follow The Commandments 

Here's a list of dos and don’ts that a SugarCloud developer should live by: 

• You shall not use custom code when configuration will do just fine. 
• You shall not have direct filesystem or DB access. 
• You shall not use blacklisted classes, functions, or file types.
• You shall not perform load or pen testing without permission of Sugar Support. 
• You shall not introduce performance or security issues with your code. 
• You shall not modify the enforced configuration parameters.
• You shall not disable or circumvent the package scanner. 
• You shall not allow an outbound HTTP connection to last longer than one second. 
• You shall not abuse the job queue with a multitude of long-running jobs. 
• You shall not abuse the REST API with more than 20 requests per second. 
• You shall upgrade to every new release. 
• You shall test before you deploy!

Conclusion:

What a Sugar rush! Now that you have all the tools, you can look forward to building code customizations more efficiently and effectively than ever. Looking for more Sugar developer content? Check out this blog post. And, if you're preparing to upgrade Sugar in the near future, give this article a read!