How to completely disable a custom module

Question

After a week of full hard work and coding i have successfully developed a magento extension which is working as expected but when i disable the module from magento admin config it still overriding the functionality, i have read about setting false in module global config files but don't getting how can i do this programatically.

Any one have any idea how this can be solve ?

Thanks

Answer 1

From the admin section with all the modules you cannot disable a module. From there you can only disable the output of some module. This means that the code is still executed but no output is generated.
Indeed, the way to disable a module is to change the tag <active> to false in the module declaration xml (app/etc/modules/Namespace_Module.xml) and clear the cache.
I don't think you can disable a module from code since the modules are loaded very early in the application (Mage_Core_Model_Config::_loadDeclaredModules()).
When building custom modules I also like to be able to disable them with 'one click'. Here is how I usually do it:
- add in the system.xml an 'enabled' field.

<enabled translate="label" module="news">
    <label>Module is enabled</label>
    <frontend_type>select</frontend_type>
    <source_model>adminhtml/system_config_source_yesno</source_model>
    <sort_order>1</sort_order>
    <show_in_default>1</show_in_default>
    <show_in_website>1</show_in_website>
    <show_in_store>1</show_in_store>
</enabled> 

- create a method in the helper to check this flag

public function getIsEnabled(){
    return Mage::getStoreConfigFlag('section/group/enabled'); //replace section & group with appropriate values.
}

Now in every piece of code that is overriding something in the core or is supposed to output something, I use this helper method.
Let's say you are overriding a method called getSomething() in a class. This is how your method should look like:

function getSomething($params){
    if (!Mage::helper('module_name')->getIsEnabled()){ //if my module is not enabled
        return parent::getSomething($params);
    }
    //your logic here.
}

Every .phtml in your module should look like this:

<?php if (Mage::helper('module_name')->getIsEnabled()) : //if my module is enabled?>
    <div>Block output here</div>
<?php endif; ?>

If all your template and overwritten methods look like this, you should be able to disable (simulate disable) from the configuration panel.

Answer 2

Marius is quite right except one thing.

Even disabling module by setting active to false in the bootstrap file is not enough in case some other module is extending it's class or using it's template.

So to be 100% sure the extension is disabled you also have to remove it's all files or at least rename directories/files.