index.md



CiviCRM Developer Guide
!!! warning "Notice"
This guide is not yet complete.
As of early 2017 we are actively working to migrate content in from the
wiki. Read more about this migration process, including how
to help out!
CiviCRM is an open-source application. The code can be
poked, prodded, twisted, and hacked. It can be customized, extended, and
collaboratively developed. This documentation tells you how to do that.
It starts with a high level introduction to get you familiar
with CiviCRM development. It covers setting up your development environment,
checking whether or not you actually need to implement your own custom code (i.e. you can't achieve what you
want through configuration or installing an already existing extension), best
practice ways to extend CiviCRM (a.k.a. how to write an extension), things you
should know before you start hacking on core, and best practice for testing.
The guide also includes detailed references for tools and subsystems
of CiviCRM. These cover topics like the API and hook system and are intended
for use by people that are familiar with CiviCRM development.

Editing & reading offline

This documentation is made with mkdocs and
stored in GitHub

See the "Writing Documentation" section in this guide
for specific details on editing this documentation (and others using
mkdocs). You can also learn how to read these docs off-line!