Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development, Third Edition

If you have ideas for additional Joomla 3! features, this book will allow you to realize them. It's a complete practical guide to building and extending plugins, modules, and components. Ideal for professional developers and enthusiasts.

Overview

• Clear steps to create your own plugins, modules, and components for Joomla 3
• Guides you through extending your components by allowing them to interact with modules and plugins
• Introduces you to packaging your extensions for distribution to other Joomla users
• Enables you to secure your extensions and avoid common vulnerabilities by gaining some white hat hacking experience

In Detail

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, Third Edition" 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.

What you will learn from this book

• Extend Joomla using plugins
• Develop both frontend and backend modules
• Build a Joomla component that looks and behaves like the core components, to reduce the learning curve for your users
• Discover common security vulnerabilities and what you can do to avoid them
• Prepare your extensions for distribution
• Manage updates and set up an update server
• Integrate third party extensions in your component

Approach

A practical guide with step-by-step examples that build on each other so you can learn by doing and get hands-on knowledge about creating your plugins, modules, and components in Joomla.

Who this book is written for

"Learning Joomla! 3 Extension Development" is for developers who want to create their own Joomla extensions. It is assumed you will have some basic PHP, HTML, and CSS knowledge, but you don’t need any prior Joomla programming experience. This book will also be useful to people who just want to make minor customizations to existing Joomla extensions and build on the work of others in the open source spirit.

Tim Plummer

Tim Plummer is a Joomla! enthusiast and extension developer who has been building websites for over ten years, and specializing in Joomla! since 2008. Tim has developed and maintained several popular components, modules, and plugins, which are listed on the Joomla! Extension Directory, in addition to his day job in IT for a multinational manufacturer. Tim lives in Sydney, Australia, with his wife, Tamlyn, who runs her own design agency and two kids, Zane and Ava-Lily, who keep Tim very busy. At university Tim studied Engineering, and he has a Bachelor of Engineering in Telecommunications Engineering degree, however his passion in IT has been his career focus.

Tim is very active in the Joomla! community; in January 2012 Tim took on the convener role for the Sydney Joomla! User Group (JUG), and he has been coorganizer for the annual Joomla!Day Sydney conference since 2011, taking on the coordinator role in 2013. Tim has run Joomla! development workshops at Joomla! Day conferences and various JUG groups throughout Australia, and is a regular presenter at the Sydney JUG.