Book Image

Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development

Book Image

Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development

Overview of this book

Joomla! is one of the world’s top open source content management systems, which enables you to build websites and powerful online applications. Out of the box, Joomla! does a great job of managing the content needed to enhance the functionality of your website. But for many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in its application framework that makes it possible for thousands of developers around the world to create powerful add-ons and extensions. This book will guide you through the complexities of implementing add-ons, components, modules, and plugins in Joomla! 1.5. If you feel that you’ve mastered the basics of creating Joomla! extensions, then this book will take you to the next level. Packed with expert advice on all aspects of programming with Joomla!, this book is an invaluable reference guide you will turn to again and again for your Joomla! development tasks. The book starts by explaining the structure and design of the Joomla! Framework. Then we move on to extending and storing data in standard fields and dealing with multilingual requirements. Further, you will discover best practices, design, and coding methods for Joomla! components, modules, plugins, and other extensions. Along the way, you will actually design and create a component, module, and plugin that work together to add functionality to the Joomla! framework. You will also learn about customizing the page output using JavaScript effects, making use of Web Services from within Joomla! and ensuring that your code is secure and error-free. You will discover how to easily create sophisticated extensions that are robust, user-friendly, and professional by taking advantage of the many libraries and utilities provided by the Joomla! framework. A comprehensive, up-to-date reference to the Joomla! Framework API is also included in the book. Finally, we will discuss advanced methods for rendering your extensions more robust, secure, and professional.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Summary


In this chapter we covered how to include and use various APIs and web services in our extensions.

We began by discussing how we could create and use XML documents. We learned that XML is integral to many web services and how to parse and navigate a parsed XML document. Joomla! provides multiple XML parsers; in this chapter we described how to use the JSimpleXML parser. Before we use this parser, we should always consider any possible benefits of using the other available parsers.

We discussed how to add AJAX capabilities to our extensions using the included MooTools JavaScript library. Before we implement any AJAX we should always consider the impact and suitability of using it.

We covered LDAP, a very powerful open technology. Its main use as an authentication method and as a network management tool often means that we use it as a data source. However, LDAP is bi-directional and we can write to LDAP servers provided we have sufficient access rights.

Using email is a common task. Joomla...