Looking for a book on Joomla development

[david0058]

Hi,

I've been struggling to get to grips with how to develop in Joomla for the last year or so, and I've got to the point where I've written a few plugins and components now, but without always understanding whether what I'm doing is the right way, or if it "just works".

For example after a couple of months of dissecting source code and trying out different things I understand how the MVC pattern works, and how to link a controller to views and use models to get the data for display but I don't know whether all of the functions I override are necessary or even if they're not 100% correct. I just code it, test it to death and then call it done !

I've read lots of tutorials online, and they've invariably been well-meaning and written by very knowledgeable developers, but they often (as all our documentation does) leave things out on the assumption that the reader knows what's meant, or include source code snippets that require something else to have been done before being called. This is a great learning experience, but highly frustrating.

Can anyone point me to a good book on developing 2.5/3.x modules, plugins, components, templates etc. that explains it all ? I've had a look on Amazon but TBH the only book reviews I'd trust 100% are from developers who've actually used them

Thanks,

David

[sozzled]

Have you tried entering "Joomla! books reviewed" in Google?

[david0058]

Yes but thanks

David

[sozzled]

Hmmm ... you didn't like what you found?

[gardenho]

David check out joomlashack.com, they have the most recent book I’ve come across about Joomla 3 in general, also states it was updated in 2017. They also have many excellent and easy to follow tutorials and one in particular on how to develop extensions.

Head over to google books to check out a plug-in how-to book by Jisse from Yireo, you can review the book somewhat before purchasing which is always nice.

If you want to learn more about the code you are writing and what it means I suggest investing in a Sitepoint.com subscription. You will find a huge amount of online courses and publications there on php, MySQL, jquery and more and also for various skill levels. I’m disappointed they don’t have more specifically regarding Joomla but I can see it would be difficult for anyone to write about it when it is constantly updating and changing.

I understand your frustration, there isn’t much beyond basics available when googling, and anything detailed seems to be for old Joomla versions which in most cases makes it irrelevant.

[david0058]

Thanks gardenho, some very useful tips - the plug-in book looks excellent and covers a number of topics that I was having difficulty with that relate to the Joomla development framework in general.

I've worked in IT a looong time and I've thought for many years that the problem we have in general is that things move so fast it's hard to get the enthusiasm to document it if there isn't a commercial driver - it's a lot more fun to write code than to document it