Classes Naming Convention

It depends on what you are naming, it varies if you are naming a component or module or a plugin. If the class is a part of Component, the general syntax is Com<YourComponentName><M/V/C><FileName>.

For Example: Let us consider, we have a component named CoolBanner. If we want to define a Banner Controller the class name should be ComCoolbannerControllerBanner. And if we want to define a model class, the class name should look like ComCoolbannerModelBanner.

But there are other things to consider when naming your class. But to understand better, we can say the naming of the class depends on the folder structure of your component and filename that will contain your class. You will generally store all your controllers in controllers folder of your component, all models in models folder, filters in Filters folder and like wise views in your views folder. (Views classname are exception to above syntax)

Lets us review how this folder structure and class naming map to each other. As per above example, we should store

ComCoolbannerControllerBanner in /component/com_coolbanner/controllers/banner.php
ComCoolbannerModelBanner in /component/com_coolbanner/models/banner.php
ComCoolbannerModelBanners in /component/com_coolbanner/models/banners.php
ComCoolbannerFilterBannerid in /components/com_coolbanner/filters/bannerid.php

Also if you have some extra level deep folders like /components/comcoolbanner/databases/ we should write the classname that reflects this level too. So for example, let us assume we have 3 folders in /components/comcoolbanner/databases/ folder namely tables , behaviors and rowsets and also have categories.php, hits.php and categories.php in these folders in order. The class name should reflect these folder structure.

ComCoolbannerDatabaseTableCategories should go in /components/com_coolbanner/databases/tables/categories.php
ComCoolbannerDatabaseBehaviorHits Should go in /components/com_coolbanner/databases/behaviors/hits.php
ComCoolbannerDatabaseRowsetCategories Should go in /components/com_coolbanner/databases/rowsets/hits.php

Views are exception to this naming convention. A View’s filename uses the document type that is being used to render the view. The class ComCoolBannerViewBannersHtml will render HTML document type for the banners view and should be stored in the file /components/comcoolbanner/views/banners/html.php. You can even add your own document type format at will. For example if you want a view to be rendered as json, you can create a view class ComCoolbannerViewBannersJson and store it in /components/comcoolbanner/views/banners/json.php

Likewise you can name your classname depending on the folder structure.

You can even follow the above naming convention to name your modules and plugins as well. The only deviation from above syntax is the prefix used to start class name. Modules start with Mod, Plugins start with Plg and Components Start Com. See below

ModCoolbannerDefault will be stored in /modules/mod_coolbanner/default.php
ModCoolbannerView will be stored in /modules/mod_coolbanner/view.php
PlgSystemCoolbanner will be stored in /plugins/system/coolbanner.php
PlgSystemCoolbannerDefault will be stored in /plugins/system/coolbanner/default.php

And likewise.

We will continue the next part of this series in my next post. We will discuss about table and field naming convention in nooku. I hope this was useful for people starting with nooku. Best of luck.

I will try to write my findings, tutorials and tweaks on Nooku in coming days. These are basically my writeup and is not affilated with Nooku or Joomla itself and If there are any errata, the blame is on me . You can even send me suggestion on topics for Blog and I will try to explain explain within my knowledge.

Creating Joomla Extensions is painstakingly rigorous task. As I am a Joomla! Extension developer myself, I know how painful it is to create an extension that works right since its first line of code. You have to be more patient to see every thing works as expected. And to add that there are many repetitive tasks that you cannot do without.  You have to create useless tables and check if the fields are sanitized before pushing it to database. You have to create a model even to get a single piece of data for controller to work with and the list goes on. But I loved Joomla then and I love it more with Nooku.

Why Nooku is better than Joomla! Core Framework?
Nooku is an answer to the above mentioned problems. You only write what you want your extension to do and nothing else. You can focus on what really matters: business logic and the user experience. Nooku does it all for you. But to be more specific on how Nooku can help you achieve what you wanted with less codes, here are the list

Object Oriented Design
Nooku harnesses OOP to its fullest and yes it works with PHP5 only. Please bear in mind initial releases of PHP5 still did not support full OOP and it is advised to use the latest PHP5 versions with Nooku that supports class autoloading, interfaces and visibility.

Design Patterns
Joomla 1.5 Framework followed Design patterns too but it is self evident that it does not utilizes the power of OOP with PHP 5 to its fullest. But nooku does that. Nooku harnesses  PHP 5 OOP and design patterns. Nooku Framework features a near zero-code MVC, an ORM with table behaviors, a powerful Chain of Command, an Object Factory with dependency injection, Lazy Loading, Mixins, Decorators, and more.

Security
Security is a major concern when creating Joomla extensions. You should be ready to sanitize every single input before storing or rendering it. But with Nooku, you can leave this rigorous task to framework itself. Nooku Framework provides excellent input filtering, and protects against CSRF automatically. This means more peace of mind.

Unparalled Extensibility
Yes Joomla! 1.5 Framework was a little stiff in nature but with Nooku you can extend any parts of core framework or extension created with Nooku. You can reuse a code you wrote in any number of extension you will write with nooku moreover you can even replace it with your own code if you want. Write you own adapters, dispatchers, filters; Nooku will help you do these without much pain.

Dynamic MVC
This means you need not write anything. Puzzled! Yes I was for the first time. This means you will write only those features that you think is unique to your application. You may not create models or controllers for generic tasks because nooku will create a controller and models for you in runtime without writing an actual code. How nooku does this? Well you need to ask Nooku for details but for now this magic is a result of OOP (Specially inheritance)  and Design Patterns as discussed above.

Drastic Code reduction
The above mentioned feature means, you have a drastic code reduction up to 70% and that too without loosing any functionality.

Intuitive API
Nooku is architecture done right and you can find symmetry in every piece of code you work with. You learn this consistent API once and apply everywhere. The API is easy to learn and more joy to work with.

Extremely Lightweight
Nooku Framework has no dependencies on PECL extensions or PEAR libraries or any other libraries. Large, monolithic libraries are avoided in favor of optimized solutions.

Made for Joomla
Nooku framework is made for Joomla! and lead by Johan Janssens, lead architect of Joomla 1.5 Framework itself. This is obviously a positive point for Nooku and developers.

Yes these features and more makes Nooku a perfect choice for Extension developers to write a future oriented extensions for Joomla. But bear in mind Nooku is under continuous development and little patience is expected from all users

I am also using Nooku for my extensions that will be out in near future. I hope you enjoyed the post and believe it will help you decide when and how to use Nooku.
Cheers!

If you are running Linux or FreeBSD Operating System on your local computer and have access to server shell, use ‘scp’ command to copy files and directories to the server.

To copy files

# scp your_filename login@yourserver.com:path

To copy entire folder/directories

# scp -r your_directoryname login@yourserver.com:path

If you are using windows OS, you can use pscp available from Putty Download Page here

Cheers!

Let us grab some essential tools to build and install Ruby

#sudo apt-get install build-essential

Installing Ruby, Documentation Generator (rdoc); We will need this later, and Openssl Library for Ruby

#sudo apt-get install ruby rdoc libopenssl-ruby

Setup RubyGems; This is ruby packaging system

#cd /tmp
#wget http://production.cf.rubygems.org/rubygems/rubygems-1.3.7.tgz
#tar zxvf rubygems-1.3.7.tgz
#cd rubygems-1.3.7
#ruby setup.rb
#ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/local/bin/gem

Install Rails (Rails is a framework that runs on Ruby; Don’t you think it should be Rails on Ruby)

#gem install rails

We will need MySQL too, so let us install MySQL gem (I am rich , see how many gems I have )

# sudo apt-get install ruby-dev libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient-dev
# gem install mysql

That is all for installation, you have almost everything to get you started with ROR. Hope it helped you get started with ROR

I hope it will be useful to humanity. Cheers

Joomla Logo

Out of the box, Joomla! does a great job of managing the content needed to make your Web site sing. But for many people, the true power of Joomla! lies in the application framework that makes it possible for developers all around the world to create powerful add-ons that are called Extensions. An Extension is used to add capabilities to Joomla! that do not exist in the base core code. Here are just some examples of the hundreds of available Extensions:

* Dynamic form builders
* Business or organisational directories
* Document management
* Image and multimedia galleries
* E-commerce and shopping cart engines
* Forums and chat software
* Calendars
* E-mail newsletters
* Data collection and reporting tools
* Banner advertising systems
* Paid subscription services
* and many, many, more

You can find more examples over at our ever growing Joomla! Extensions Directory. Prepare to be amazed at the amount of exciting work produced by our active developer community!

A useful guide to the Extension site can be found at:

http://extensions.joomla.org/content/view/15/63/

Types of Extensions

There are five types of extensions:

* Components
* Modules
* Templates
* Plugins
* Languages

You can read more about the specifics of these using the links in the Article Index – a Table of Contents (yet another useful feature of Joomla!) – at the top right or by clicking on the Next link below.

Component

A Component is the largest and most complex of the Extension types. Components are like mini-applications that render the main body of the page. An analogy that might make the relationship easier to understand would be that Joomla! is a book and all the Components are chapters in the book. The core Article Component (com_content), for example, is the mini-application that handles all core Article rendering just as the core registration Component (com_user) is the mini-application that handles User registration.

Many of Joomla!’s core features are provided by the use of default Components such as:

* Contacts
* Front Page
* News Feeds
* Banners
* Mass Mail
* Polls

A Component will manage data, set displays, provide functions, and in general can perform any operation that does not fall under the general functions of the core code.

Components work hand in hand with Modules and Plugins to provide a rich variety of content display and functionality aside from the standard Article and content display. They make it possible to completely transform Joomla! and greatly expand its capabilities.

Module

A more lightweight and flexible Extension used for page rendering is a Module. Modules are used for small bits of the page that are generally less complex and able to be seen across different Components. To continue in our book analogy, a Module can be looked at as a footnote or header block, or perhaps an image/caption block that can be rendered on a particular page. Obviously you can have a footnote on any page but not all pages will have them. Footnotes also might appear regardless of which chapter you are reading. Simlarly Modules can be rendered regardless of which Component you have loaded.

Modules are like little mini-applets that can be placed anywhere on your site. They work in conjunction with Components in some cases and in others are complete stand alone snippets of code used to display some data from the database such as Articles (Newsflash) Modules are usually used to output data but they can also be interactive form items to input data for example the Login Module or Polls.

Modules can be assigned to Module positions which are defined in your Template and in the back-end using the Module Manager and editing the Module Position settings. For example, “left” and “right” are common for a 3 column layout.
Displaying Modules

Each Module is assigned to a Module position on your site. If you wish it to display in two different locations you must copy the Module and assign the copy to display at the new location. You can also set which Menu Items (and thus pages) a Module will display on, you can select all Menu Items or you can pick and choose by holding down the control key and selecting multiple locations one by one in the Modules [Edit] screen

Note: Your Main Menu is a Module! When you create a new Menu in the Menu Manager you are actually copying the Main Menu Module (mod_mainmenu) code and giving it the name of your new Menu. When you copy a Module you do not copy all of its parameters, you simply allow Joomla! to use the same code with two separate settings.
Newsflash Example

Newsflash is a Module which will display Articles from your site in an assignable Module position. It can be used and configured to display one Category, all Categories, or to randomly choose Articles to highlight to Users. It will display as much of an Article as you set, and will show a Read more… link to take the User to the full Article.

The Newsflash Component is particularly useful for things like Site News or to show the latest Article added to your Web site.

Plugin

One of the more advanced Extensions for Joomla! is the Plugin. In previous versions of Joomla! Plugins were known as Mambots. Aside from changing their name their functionality has been expanded. A Plugin is a section of code that runs when a pre-defined event happens within Joomla!. Editors are Plugins, for example, that execute when the Joomla! event onGetEditorArea occurs. Using a Plugin allows a developer to change the way their code behaves depending upon which Plugins are installed to react to an event.

Language

New to Joomla! 1.5 and perhaps the most basic and critical Extension is a Language. Joomla! is released with multiple Installation Languages but the base Site and Administrator are packaged in just the one Language en-GB – being English with GB spelling for example. To include all the translations currently available would bloat the core package and make it unmanageable for uploading purposes. The Language files enable all the User interfaces both Front-end and Back-end to be presented in the local preferred language. Note these packs do not have any impact on the actual content such as Articles.

More information on languages is available from the

http://community.joomla.org/translations.html

One of the main issues we commonly run into is a non-working .htaccess file.  Apache doesn’t come with .htaccess support automatically turned on.  You’ll have to turn it on in order for .htaccess files to have an effect.  Here’s what you do:

There are two ways,

1. Edit your httpd.conf manually using a text editor like vim, nano, vi, joe whatever you like.
2. Edit your httpd.conf through Webmin

Since the Webmin version is more graphical, we’ll show you how to do it through Webmin.  If you’re using a text editor, just skip to the portion with the AllowOveride command.

1. Login to your Webmin
2. Servers>Apache Webserver
3. Go to the “Global Configuration” tab
4. Click on “Edit Config Files”
5. Search for AllowOverride and .htaccess and remove the # sign in front or type “AllowOverride All”. or Search for AllowOverride None and replace with AllowOverride All
   This should fix it permanently and allow your .htaccess files to override pretty much and directive needed.

In this short tutorial, I will tell about creating elements and using it differently on different places. Elements are special files that generally adds value to parameters. For this tutorial, I will create a color element that  can be used in different components, modules, plugins where color selection is done through a color picker. I will use moorainbow as web color picker.
Also note, I am creating this element for my adsensebingo module. Hence this code has been tested and used.

Creating Color Element File

Element file are generally single php file that has element class that extends JElement base class. The class overrides fetchElement method of JElement Base class to provide color picker.
Let us create a folder that will hold all files necessary for color element.  Let us call this folder “element”. Download the latest moorainbow library and place it in a subfolder directly below the elements folder. Now create a color.php file . This file is the element file and has a class JElementColor that extends JElement base class.
Now override fetchElement method of JElement base class. The important part of element is the fetchElement method. This method actually returns data that can be used by parameters.

A little explanation about fetchElement is necessary. method fetchElement requires 4 arguments namely
$name – is the unique name of the parameter, from the name argument.
$value – is the current value of the parameter.
$node – is a JSimpleXMLElement object representing the <param> element.
$control_name – is the parameter type from the type argument (eg. ‘category’ or ‘color’).

The fetchElement method for Color element is as below

function fetchElement($name, $value, &$node, $control_name)
{
        ob_start();
        $img=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/images/rainbow.png";
        $imgx=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/images/";
        static $embedded;
                if(!$embedded)
        {
            $css2=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/css/mooRainbow.css";
            $jspath=JUri::root()."modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements/moorainbow/js/mooRainbow.js";
             ?>
<link
    href="<?php echo $css2;?>" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="<?php echo $jspath;?>"></script>

            <?php
            $embedded=true;

        ?>
<script>

            window.addEvent('domready',function(){
//Get sibling function from http://www.sanjeevshrestha.com.np
                Element.extend({
                    getSiblings: function() {
                        return this.getParent().getChildren().remove(this);
                    }
                });
            $('.rainbowbtn').each(function(item){

         item.color=new MooRainbow(item.id, {
                    startColor: [58, 142, 246],
                    wheel: true,
                    id:item.id+'x',
                    onChange: function(color) {

                    item.getSiblings()[0].value = color.hex;
                    },
                    onComplete: function(color) {

                    item.getSiblings()[0].value = color.hex;
                    },

                    imgPath: '<?php echo $imgx;?>'

                });

                });
            });
            </script>
            <?php
        }
            ?>
            <label>
<input
    name="<?php echo $control_name;?////>[<?php echo $name;?>]" type="text"
    class="inputbox" id="<?php echo  $control_name.$name ?>"
    value="<?php echo $value;?>" size="10" />
<img
    src="<?php echo $img;? />" id="img<?php echo $name; ?>" alt="[r]"
    class="rainbowbtn" width="16" height="16" /></label>
        <?php

        $content=ob_get_contents();

        ob_end_clean();
        return $content;

    }

That is it.

Using it in Module Parameters.

Now let us use this in module parameter. Parameters are generally written in
element block. For these params block to render our color element we need to specify path to our elements folder in this params element node as below

<params addpath="[path]/elements"> </param>
--- list of <param> elements ---
</params>

In our case this is written as

<params addpath="/modules/mod_adsensebingo/elements"> </param>
<param name="foreground" type="color" default="#CC0000" label="Foreground Color" description="Select foreground color for your google ad" > </param>
-- other <param> elements
</params>

Now this block is aware of new elment type and knows where to find the element rendering code. The parameter section of module setting page now correctly shows a color picker.
You can create any kind of elments, from a simple integer list to a complex color element or elements that shows records from your component. The usage is limitless.

That is all for color element. More to come on element tutorials till then happy reading.

Recently I created a donation module for joomla that collects donations on Joomla sites. This module uses Paypal to collect donations and is simple to setup and you can get it up and running within a minute. This module is free to use and is released under GNU/GPL. You can see live demo of the module at www.joomlaguru.com.np.

Features

Version 1.0 has following features. You can view the parameters for this module. This module has rich set of configuration options as explained below.

Select Server - This has two options and lets user to select between live and sandbox environment on paypal.

Paypal Merchant  Email/ID - Paypal Email. You can also enter paypal merchant ID instead of paypal email. This increases security without exposing your email address.

Donate To Text - Configure text that is displayed on invoice and paypal donation collecting form.

Fixed Donation – You can choose to accept fixed donations or Donation through input box or a drop down box. If you select fixed donations, please enter donation amount in next field too. If you select “Show amount in select box” user is presented a drop down box with different denominations. These denominations can be configured from a file that is under modules->mod_osdonate->data->amounts.dat

Fixed Amount Donation – Fixed donation amount. This is used only when fixed_donation is active.

Your locale currency - Select currency in which you want to accept donation. Be advised this currency should be active in your paypal. If not this may cause error. You can add currencies in your paypal account. Please refer to paypal help on more about this.

Your Country locale - Select your country. This should be from your paypal account.

Thank you page – Select article that will be displayed when user makes a successful payment through paypal donation form.

Cancel Page – Select article that will be displayed when user cancels the payment.

Donation Intro Text - Text that will be displayed before paypal donate button. Be expressive and a little funny to your viewers.

Donation Post Text – Text that will appear after the donation button.

This is all you need to collect donations from your joomla site.

You can view more details about this module here. Also you can download the module here.

If you like this module consider contributing at Joomlaguru.com.np. Your small contribution can make a difference.

Happy reading!!