Blog entries from gbluma

Joomla 1.5 Custom Breadcrumbs

Garrett Bluma — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Joomla seems to have everything figured out — Breadcrumb support is no exception.

Recently we were writing some custom component for a client and needed to handle the breadcrumbs in a special way that Joomla couldn't manage automatically.

As a simplified example, imagine we redirect a user to a component that isn't attached to a menu. We would expect the breadcrumbs to simply output "Home" and provide a link back to the index of the site.

Home

(Notice: Home is not a Read More...

XMLWriter in PHP

Garrett Bluma — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Every now and then I find myself needing to export a set of objects to XML. I usually find a quick way to write a dumb function to do it, but this is usually not the most elegant solution and rarely does it scale up to handle more complex data structures. The other option is to serialize the data into xml, but usually these methods suffer from a large performance overhead and should only be used if you can tweak the serializer to work only the right pieces of data.

I have since added Read More...

Missing Dialog Text in VirtueMart 1.1.2

Garrett Bluma — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:49:28 +0100

I've noticed that in VirtueMart (only on some server setups, mind you) the dialog that pops up when you "Add to Cart" is missing it's message (as follows):

instead of:

I've been struggling with this bug in VirtueRead More...

How to view more file-types in JCE 1.5.1

Garrett Bluma — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:00:00 +0100

JCE is a great tool. It works far better than the default tiny_mce that ships with Joomla. Problem is, it still has a few little bugs here and there--and in this case a lack of configurability.

JCE has a default set of file-types is recognizes as usable for inserting, as a link, into content. These include:

html, htm, doc, docx, ppt, rtf, xls, txt, gif, jpeg, jpg, png, pdf, swf, mov, mpeg, mpg, avi, asf, asx, dcr, flv, wmv, wav, mp3

But what if you want to add a new onRead More...

Adding a Login/Logout link in Joomla Template

Garrett Bluma — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:00:00 +0100

This should be a quick one, hopefully. It will require a bit of programming skill as well as some understanding of how Joomla works behind-the-scenes.

Joomla doesn't come with a built-in module for showing a Login/Logout link. I'm sure that someone in the community has made one, but for verbosity I'll explain how to build your own.

First, let's create a link in our template to send people to our login page.

index.php in template:

<?php
defined('_JEXEC') orRead More...

Writing a Joomla 1.5 Content Plugin

Garrett Bluma — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0100

This article will show you how to build a quick plugin to replace some text in an article before it get's displayed to the user.

Intro

Lately I've been writing a number of content plugins for Joomla. They're pretty simple, but basically it allows you to transform the content at a number of points in Joomla's process of editing, saving, and displaying of that content. In theory you could use it to do anything but it's common to replace text and/or add special content into the articlesRead More...

Joomla 1.5 Custom Parameter Type (WYSIWYG)

Garrett Bluma — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Joomla has made module development a piece of cake. If you want a section of your module to display a poll or banner it's really easy. Likewise Joomla has made it easy to edit the content in those modules with module parameters.

... But one thing you haven't been able to do is edit those parameters in a WYSIWYG textarea... until now...

Joomla HTTPS Redirect Plugin (Beta)

Garrett Bluma — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:00:00 +0100

The HTTPS Redirect Plugin redirects a visitor to the same page under HTTPS.

When a user requests a url over HTTP (e.g. http://example.com/secure/stuff/ ) Joomla will handle the redirection to the appropriate HTTPS page (e.g. https://example.com/secure/stuff/ )

This plugin allows the administrator to force users into HTTPS protocol under Joomla. Actually, the full extent of theRead More...

Discover Your Future Site

Garrett Bluma — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:00:00 +0100

So you want to revamp your current site right? Or maybe you want a new site but can't put your finger exactly on what you need.

Here are a few things to consider which might help you decide on the details. I'll also run through a test scenario of a small photography company as an example.

1. What does your organization do?
If yRead More...

Write an Advanced Joomla 1.5 Authentication Plugin (Part 2)

Garrett Bluma — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:00:00 +0100

In my previous article Write an Advanced Joomla 1.5 Authentication Plugin I went over how to integrate Joomla with an alternate login system (i.e. legacy code from a previous project)

This is good, but we don't need to stop here. We can improve the authentication plugin by attaching session data from our legacy system and essentially merge our legacy session with our joomla session.

For example if we have a database table for session data with the following fields:

session_Read More...

Write an Advanced Joomla 1.5 Authentication Plugin

Garrett Bluma — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:00:00 +0100

Why Joomla's (or any CMS's) login system alone isn't enough

In the support of any long-lived project, chances are pretty good that you'll need to adapt the project to meet the requirements of another system. One specific area which I want to focus on is authentication-- that is, being able to extend Joomla's standard authentication system to support an alternate user table.

The problem we have is a CMS (Joomla) that needs to integrate with another project. This alternate project has iRead More...