The Challenge

I took over maintenance of Findologic's Search and Navigation Plugin for Shopware when Shopware 6 was still in RC (release candidate). The plugin had basic functionality but lacked production-grade quality, comprehensive testing, and proper CI/CD infrastructure.

Critical Pain Points

  • No automated testing infrastructure or code coverage
  • Plugin needed to support rapidly evolving Shopware 6 platform from RC through multiple releases
  • Manual release process prone to errors and inconsistencies
  • Enterprise clients requiring production-grade reliability and support
  • Open-source community expectations for quality and documentation

The goal was to achieve production-grade quality with comprehensive test coverage, establish automated CI/CD pipelines, and maintain compatibility across multiple Shopware 6 releases as the platform matured from RC to stable production versions.

The Solution

I rebuilt the plugin with a test-first approach, implementing comprehensive testing infrastructure and establishing professional development practices that transformed it into a production-grade enterprise solution used by major e-commerce operations.

Technical Implementation

100% Test Coverage with PHPUnit

Implemented comprehensive unit and functional tests achieving 100% code coverage, ensuring every component is tested and validated against Shopware's test environment and real-world scenarios.

CI/CD Pipeline Automation

Established GitHub Actions workflows for automated testing on every commit, code quality checks, and automated releases ensuring consistent quality and rapid deployment of updates.

Multi-Version Shopware Support

Maintained compatibility from Shopware 6 RC through 6.4, implementing version-specific adaptations while maintaining backward compatibility and leveraging new platform features as they became available.

Open Source Best Practices

Maintained plugin on GitHub with comprehensive documentation, contribution guidelines, issue tracking, and community engagement, establishing it as a professional open-source project.

Results & Business Impact

Production-Grade Quality Achieved

Plugin transformed from RC-quality code to enterprise-grade solution with 100% test coverage, serving major e-commerce operations with confidence and reliability.

Automated Release Process

CI/CD pipelines reduced release cycle from days to minutes, with automated testing catching issues before deployment and ensuring consistent quality across releases.

Platform Evolution Support

Successfully maintained compatibility across multiple Shopware 6 versions from RC to 6.4, adapting to platform changes while preserving backward compatibility.

Community Engagement

Established active open-source community with comprehensive documentation, responsive issue handling, and professional development practices that became a model for Shopware plugin development.

Technologies Used

Shopware 5 Shopware 6 PHP 8 Symfony PHPUnit GitHub Actions CI/CD REST APIs

Project Details

Industry
E-commerce / Search Technology
Location
Austria
Project Type
Feature Development & Support
Duration
3-year contract (ended Feb 2022)

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