Joomla! Development Book
I always like to keep some good books on my shelf for reference or bathroom reads. Nearly all of my books are tech-related, but I do find myself surfing the web for a lot of my day-to-day reference needs. However, when it comes to the Joomla! CMS platform, I have found the online documentation to be a little lack luster. So, I purchased the book “Joomla! Programming” by Mark Dexter and Louis Landry. So far, this is the best book I have found for learning Joomla! development.
The Joomla! CMS is built using PHP, so experience with the language is assumed. Also, like many other web development platforms, Joomla! uses the Model View Controller design pattern or MVC. If there is any learning block for this book besides PHP experience, it would be knowing the basics of MVC design. If you have an understanding of MVC, then you should be fine.
Outline
The book is split into the following chapters, but do not feel like you have to read chronologically. The book is very thorough, so I would imagine it being tiresome to drag through it topic by topic. I have already bounced around quite a bit.
- What is Joomla! Development - introduces the building blocks of the system (components, modules, plug-ins, etc.)
- Getting Your Workstation Ready for Joomla! Development - talks about common IDE’s (Eclipse) and tools used for development
- How Joomla! Works - outlines the entire framework by name, directory, and function
- Extending Joomla! with Layout Overrides - how to for overriding layouts/templates
- Extending Joomla! with Plugins - a how to for creating plugins
- Extending Joomla! with Modules - a how to for creating modules
- Components Part I: Controllers and Models - explains CRUD and MVC concepts that drive components
- Components Part II: Views, JForm, and Front End - discussed the front-end and routing techniques used with components
- Components Part III: Example Component Back End - a walk through for creating the back end portion of a component that will be driven from the administrator panel
- Components Part IV: Example Component Front End - a walk through for creating the front end portion of a component that is visible to all users
- Working with Your Database - covers basic database commands, structures, and best practices
- JavaScript and MooTools in Joomla! - discusses the front end JavaScript framework that comes prepacked with Joomla!
- Using the Joomla! Platform as an Application Framework - investigates general web application development and examples using Joomla!