J and Beyond Presentation - Continuous Integration

Written by Jeremy Wilken 15 Jun2011

J and Beyond 2011 took place last month in Kerkrade, Netherlands. Again this year, I was the lead organizer for video production, and have almost finished getting all 60+ videos online for all to see. I also gave a presentation this year about Continuous Integration, and I'd like to share that here.

Its a very useful and important developer practice, and I encourage you to take a closer look at how it can help you develop.

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Version Independent Joomla Tips - #3 Code structure

Written by Jeremy Wilken 16 Apr2011

It is time for tip #3, which I find to be the most useful but requires the most work.

Tip #3 - Code structure

Extensions for Joomla should be written using some fundamental PHP design patterns, most notably the MVC (Model View Controller) pattern. Components are the only extensions that use it fully, since they are the only extension type that has major control over the page creation, where other extension types are added on demand. This tactic is most useful when writing components, but could be used anywhere.

The way you structure your code matters. However when you write an extension for multiple versions of Joomla, that also uses different code due to the different versions, adding a lot of version checks can quickly become a major problem. If you find yourself adding in a version check multiple times, then you should consider using some OOP principles.

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Version Independent Joomla Tips - #2 Manifest files

Written by Jeremy Wilken 11 Mar2011

It is time for tip #2, which I think many people have figured out but maybe I can shed a little more light into this area.

Tip #2 - Multi-version manifest files

Most of the functionality in the 1.5 installer remains in Joomla 1.6. Sadly, some parts were altered and there isn't much we can do about that now. The most obvious change is that the 1.5 JParameter (<params>) are no longer valid, and have to be replaced with Joomla 1.6 JForm (<config>) markup. However, there is no reason you have to remove one for the other, they can both exist in the installation file. This means you can have parameters settings (or options as they are called in 1.6) that apply to both versions. For example you could have the following in a template manifest and both versions would display the same settings, ignoring the other set.

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Version Independent Joomla Tips - #1 Language Files

Written by Jeremy Wilken 21 Feb2011

As a Joomla developer, I want to maintain only one copy of my extensions to allow them to work on all as many versions as possible. If I can maintain only one version, then I have only have the amount of code to worry about, hopefully fewer bugs, happier customers, and less stress. While there are situations where this may be impossible, I've been working to attempt to prove that wrong. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting some quick tips or tricks I've come up with to make my life just a little bit easier, and hopefully it can help you too.

Tip #1 - Multi-version language files

You can't get around it, Joomla 1.6 now requires language string values to be wrapped in quotation marks. This is the difference in a language string from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6.

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Joomla 1.6 is here!

Written by Jeremy Wilken 11 Jan2011

Late last night in my time zone, Joomla 1.6 was released to the world. I had left my computer and was shutting it down for the night, but was around the 500th person to download it. In less than 12 hours, over 15,000 people have downloaded it.

I want to congratulate the production leadership team and the many volunteers who made this all happen. Andrew Eddie posted a blog on the Joomla site giving thanks to the individual people who helped in some way. Please take a moment to read that post. Also today is his birthday, so Happy Birthday to Andrew, and hopefully the terrible flooding around where he lives passes as soon as possible.

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