Book Image

Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development - Third Edition

By : Timothy John Plummer
Book Image

Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development - Third Edition

By: Timothy John Plummer

Overview of this book

Joomla 3 is the first of the major open source content management systems that was meant to be mobile friendly by default. Joomla uses object-oriented principles, is database agnostic, and has the best mix of functionality, extensibility, and user friendliness. Add to that the fact that Joomla is completely community driven, and you have a winning combination that is available to everyone, and is the perfect platform to build your own custom applications. "Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development" is an integrated series of practical, hands-on tutorials that guide you through building and extending Joomla plugins, modules, and components. With Joomla having been downloaded well over 35 million times, there is a huge market for Joomla extensions, so you could potentially earn some extra cash in your spare time using your newly acquired Joomla extension development skills. We will start with developing simple plugins and modules, and then progress to more complex backend and frontend component development. Then we will try our hand at ethical hacking, so you will learn about common security vulnerabilities and what you can do to avoid them. After that we will look at how you can prepare your extensions for distribution and updates, as well as how you can extend your components with various plugins and modules. Finally, you will end up with a fully functioning package of extensions that you can use on your own site or share with others. If you want to build your own custom applications in Joomla, then "Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development" will teach you everything you need to know in a practical, hands-on manner.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Plugin types


Before we create our first plugin, let's talk about the different types of plugins that you can create for Joomla!. Plugin code is executed when certain events are triggered. You can skip the next couple of pages if you just want to get stuck in with the hands-on example and just go straight to the Where do I start? section, but you may want to refer back to this introduction later when you are creating your own plugins. The different types of plugins are explained as follows:

  • Authentication: When you log in to your website, an authentication plugin runs to check your credentials and decide if you should have access to the site. Authentication plugins are used when you want to use other login methods too, such as Facebook, Gmail, or LDAP. You can use more than one authentication plugin on the same site so that you can give your users a choice and not force them to have to remember another password by allowing them to reuse one of their existing accounts in another system. The...