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

Multi-database support


One of the great things about Joomla! 3 is that it is database agnostic, and now supports additional database types such as MS SQL Server and PostgreSQL for those that do not want to use MySQL. It is beyond the scope of this book to give step-by-step instructions on how to set up these alternative database types in our development environment, but we will look at what changes are necessary to our component to support the MS SQL Server.

When Joomla! is installed, the available database types that your server (or localhost) supports are shown in the Database Type dropdown.

If you wish to support the Microsoft SQL Server, you will need to make some changes to your php.ini file, which is going to vary depending on your server configuration and PHP version. For example:

extension=php_sqlsrv_54_ts.dll

Most likely, this driver is not included in your PHP by default, so you may have to download the driver. If configured correctly, your phpinfo page should show a sqlsrv section...