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

To fork or not to fork?


When you are creating a new extension for Joomla!, should you start from scratch, or fork another similar extension, or use an extension building component? This book is going to cover creating an extension from scratch, so you can learn all the basics. Once you know these, you may wish to fork the extensions we make together or even fork one of your own extensions to save you a lot of time if you need to make something similar.

There are several extension building components that will prompt you for a bit of information, then create a basic component, plugin, or module based on the information you provide. EasyCreator is one such extension that I have used in the past, but you still need to know the basics to be able to modify this automatically generated code to suit your needs. If you want to know more about these types of extension building components, you can refer to the development category within the miscellaneous category on the JED. The JED listing for EasyCreator can be found at http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/miscellaneous/development/5908.

With regards to forking someone else's extensions, you probably should first approach the developer and discuss your ideas and see if there is an opportunity to work together to make the original extension even better. If the developer has lost interest in further developing the extension or if you have a completely different vision that will take the software down an entirely different path, then there may be an opportunity to fork the extension rather than starting over from scratch.