Portal:Developers

<translate> The development of Joomla! itself is carried out by the Production Department and third party developers. This page is a starting point for developers interested in the development of components, modules, plugins and templates.</translate>

<translate> Have an Interest in Core Contributions?</translate>

Getting Started

<translate> There are several ways of setting up your workstation in for Joomla! development. Some suggestions can be found at Setting up your workstation for Joomla development.</translate>

<translate> Next, you should familiarise yourself with Joomla! Secure coding guidelines and the short article on Joomla! Development Best Practices.</translate>

<translate> Documentation on the Joomla! API can assist with becoming familiar with the foundations of the Joomla! code base.</translate>

<translate> Finally, Joomla! has many resources for developers. Our Joomla! Resources page will get you pointed in the right direction if you need help and solutions.</translate>

There is four types of extensions development:

• Components Development
• Plugins Development
• Templates Development
• Modules Development

Components

<translate> Component Development</translate>

{{Portal:Component_Development/Intro/<translate> en</translate>}}

<translate> Intro to Component Development</translate>

{{Portal:Component_Development/Reading list/<translate> en</translate>}}

<translate> General Information</translate>

{{Portal:Component_Development/Information/<translate> en</translate>}}

<translate> FAQs</translate>

{{Portal:Component_Development/FAQs/<translate> en</translate>}}

<translate> Tutorials</translate>

{{Portal:Component_Development/Tutorials/<translate> en</translate>}}

For more articles and information, see the Component Development Portal page.

{{Portal:Plugin_Development/Reading_list/<translate> en</translate>}}

Templates

Our template development documentation contains many articles, FAQs and tutorials. A first step to developing a template is understanding how templates are executed.

Beginners

• Changing the site favicon
• Using Firebug With Your Joomla Website
• Using Joomla's Default Icomoon Fonts

Intermediate

• jdoc statements
• How to cloak email addresses  
• Understanding Output Overrides  
• Layout Overrides in Joomla!  
• Creating clickable background images using CSS
• Using Class Suffixes

More Development Topics

<translate>

• Accessing the database using JDatabase
• Using the JTable class
• Connecting to an external database
• Using nested sets</translate>

<translate>

• Language Guidelines for 3rd Party Extensions
  • Making templates translatable
• Creating a language file
• Specification of language files
• Language Metadata
• Loading extra language files</translate>
• Debugging a translation

<translate>

• Access Control List
• Adding ACL rules to your component </translate>

<translate>

Form Fields

</translate>

• <translate> Introduction to the Form classes in Joomla</translate>
• <translate> Joomla Core Form Fields</translate>
• <translate> Creating a custom form field type</translate>
• <translate> Overriding the "Rules" Form Field</translate>

<translate>

Form Rules & Validation

</translate>

• <translate> Form validation</translate>

<translate>

• How to add CSRF anti-spoofing to forms
• Securing Joomla! extensions
• Why do most of the Joomla! PHP files start with defined(' JEXEC')?
• Register Globals best practices (only relevant if your Joomla Site runs on PHP 5.3 or below)</translate>

Misc

• Retrieving request data using JInput and newer
• Retrieving data from GET and POST requests
• How to use the filesystem package
• Application execution order
• Accessing the current user object
• Adding JavaScript and CSS to the page
• Constants used in the Joomla Framework.
• Create a stand-alone application using the Joomla! Framework
• How to use user state variables
• Cache and Using caching to speed up your code
• Using the installer API to support package installation
• How to add tooltips to your Joomla! website
• Display error messages and notices.
• Sharing layouts across views or extensions with JLayout
• Using JLog
• JSON Responses with JResponseJson

Contributing to Documentation

<translate> The development of Joomla developer documentation is carried out primarily by the Documentation Working Group. There is currently one sub-projects of interest to developers:</translate> <translate>

• Developer Tutorials Project</translate>

<translate> When creating a new page, ensure you place the following marker at the bottom of the page so it is included in the category list:</translate>

[[Category:Development]]

<translate> If you locate other articles you think are relevant to developers, please add this marker to those pages.</translate>

Suggested topics

This is a short list of articles that might be written to support developers. Please feel free to add further topic ideas.

• Adding configuration objects to modules and plugins.
• Storing data in the session between page loads.
• Suppressing output of extra HTML.
• Using the filter package.

  Describe how and when to use the Filter package and explain what needs to be filtered for various situations (for queries, for URLs, etc)

• Using the registry package

  How to load and store XML files and how to work with them

• Creating component feeds (RSS/ATOM)
• Generating paths for client side and server side
• Acessing information from the request

  This focuses on using the JBrowser class to retrieve information about the features available in the user's browser.

• Creating an editor plugin
• What can be done with a user plugin
• Cloaking email addresses
• Using the caching system in your component. This might be enough (for now?) → Cache
• Extending Joomla's MVC Architecture
• How to release a distribution tarball.
• Creating a library for your extension(s).