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Mastering Joomla! 1.5
Extension and Framework
Development
The Professional Guide to Programming
Joomla!
Extend the power of Joomla! by adding components,
modules, plugins, and other extensions
Chuck Lanham
James Kennard
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
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Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework
Development
The Professional Guide to Programming Joomla!
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
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permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in
critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy
of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is
sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt
Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages
caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the
companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.
However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: November 2007
Second edition: June 2010
Production Reference: 1250510
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847190-52-3
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman ([email protected])
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Credits
Authors Editorial Team Leader
Chuck Lanham Akshara Aware
James Kennard
Project Team Leader
Reviewers Priya Mukherji
Jose Argudo Blanco
Suhreed Sarkar Project Coordinator
Ashwin Shetty
Acquisition Editor
Douglas Paterson Proofreaders
Joel Johnson
Development Editor Aaron Nash
Darshana D. Shinde
Graphics
Technical Editors Geetanjali Sawant
Bhupali Khule
Aaron Rosario Production Coordinator
Aparna Bhagat
Indexers
Rekha Nair Cover Work
Monica Ajmera Mehta Aparna Bhagat
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About the Author
Chuck Lanham began his career as a database software engineer with Burroughs
Corp. He later worked for Informix Corp. managing the database tools development
group while serving as repository architect. He has founded and managed two
successful software development companies, and taught college courses on database
theory, data communications, and computer technologies. He has also managed the
global development and deployment of leading CRM and CMS systems for many
Fortune 500 companies, and managed the development and deployment of some
of the largest e-commerce websites in the world.
In 2002, Chuck left the corporate world and started a new company, Blue Water
Associates. This company is located near the deep blue waters of Lake Tahoe where
he designs, develops, and maintains websites for small to medium sized businesses,
both within the U.S. and abroad.
Chuck has been developing websites using Joomla! since 2007 with the release of
version 1.5 and has developed several extensions for use in the websites he has
designed. This is Chuck's first book as an author, although he has reviewed and
edited several books and written numerous technical articles for publication.
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I would like to thank James Kennard for the fine work that he did
on the first edition of this book. Of all the books that I have read on
Joomla!, his work was the best. Without his efforts, my work with
Joomla! would have been much the worse. I also wish to thank
Darshana Shinde and Ashwin Shetty of Packt Publishing for their
patience and encouragement during this seemingly long process.
To Darshana especially, for giving me the opportunity to write this
book. Thanks for the amazing eye for detail and technical accuracy
provided by Aaron Rosario, you saved me from myself more than
once and always made me smile. And I must give special recognition
to Nancy Lee Teply in Saint Charles County, Missouri for turning me
onto Joomla!. Thank you Nancy, it has been a great adventure.
I must thank my mother, Nellie Ann Lanham, who was an
extraordinary and gifted writer; she has always been my inspiration.
And finally, I thank my wife, Janet, for being there, and for her
understanding and love.
James Kennard is an accomplished programmer with proven experience in many
different types of organization. He has worked as a private consultant and worked
in the public and private sectors for the likes of Logica and the National Library
of Wales. He has over six years of experience working with Joomla!, previously
Mambo. As an active member of the Joomla! community he maintains a popular
open source helpdesk component.
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About the Reviewer
Jose Argudo is a web developer from Valencia, Spain. After completing his studies
he started working for a web design company. Six years later, he decided to start
working as a freelancer.
Now that some years have passed as a freelancer, he thinks it's the best decision he
has ever taken, a decision that let him work with the tools he likes, such as Joomla!,
CodeIgniter, CakePHP, jQuery, and other known open source technologies.
His desire to learn and share his knowledge has led him to be a regular reviewer of
books from Packt, such as Drupal E-commerce, Joomla! With Flash, Joomla! 1.5 SEO,
Magento Theme Design and Symfony 1.3 web application development.
Recently he has even published his own book, CodeIgniter 1.7, which can be found on
the Packt website. If you work with PHP, take a look at it!
He is currently working on a new book for Packt, this time Joomla! related, check for
it soon!
If you want to know more about him, you can check his site at
www.joseargudo.com.
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Suhreed Sarkar is an IT consultant, trainer, and technical writer. He studied
Marine engineering, served on board a ship for two years, and then began his
journey into the IT world with MCSE in Windows NT 4.0 track. Later he studied
business administration and earned MBA from the University of Dhaka. He has
a bunch of BrainBench certifications on various topics including PHP4, Project
Management, RDBMS Concepts, E-commerce, Web Server Administration,
Internet Security, Training Development, Training Delivery and Evaluation,
and Technical Writing.
As a trainer, he taught courses on system administration, web development,
e-commerce and MIS. He has consulted several national and international
organizations including United Nations, and helped clients building and adopting
their enterprise portals, large-scale databases and management information systems.
He is a renowned technical author in Bengali – having dozens of books published on
subjects covering web development, LAMP, networking, and system administration.
He authored three books for Packt - Zen Cart: E-commerce Application
Development, Joomla! E-commerce with VirtueMart, and Joomla! with Flash. Now
he is authoring a Cookbook on Joomla!
While not busy with hacking some apps, blogging on his blog (www.suhreedsarkar.
com), he likes to spend time with his family. Suhreed lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh and
can be contacted at [email protected].
I would like to thank the team at Packt who provided excellent
support to work on this book, especially Darshana Shinde and
Ashwin Shetty. I am also grateful to my family and friends for
allowing me to work on this.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Introduction to Joomla! 9
Overview 9
Joomla! 1.5 Framework 10
Framework layer 10
Libraries 11
Framework 11
Plugins 12
Application layer 13
Extension layer 13
Extension types and their uses 14
Components 14
Modules 14
Plugins 15
Languages 15
Templates 15
Tools 15
Extension Manager 16
Requirements 16
Joomla Extension Directory (JED) 17
Development tools 17
JoomlaCode.org 18
Coding standards 18
phpDocumentor 19
J!Dump 21
Summary 23
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