I'm upgrading a client's Joomla from 1.0 to 1.5, and in the process porting over some existing Mambots to 1.5 Plugins.
The OO interface of Joomla 1.5 is definitely a vast improvement over 1.0. Yet, even with the provided tutorial, I couldn't seem to get my Plugin to work. Here's a few of the big hurdles I had to clear before I could get my first plugin working.
For the sake of a comparable example, suppose I wanted create a plugin that replaced all instances of the word and with or. I started off with the following to files in and.zip and installed them (oh, and don't forget to activate the plugin after install!):
and.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<install version="1.5" type="plugin" group="system">
<name>And to Or</name>
<author>Ben Simon</author>
<authorEmail>questions@ideas2executables.com</authorEmail>
<authorUrl>http://www.ideas2executables.com/</authorUrl>
<version>1.0</version>
<description>Map all instances of And to Or</description>
<files>
<filename plugin="and">and.php</filename>
</files>
</install>
and.php:
<?php
defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );
jimport( 'joomla.plugin.plugin' );
class AndPlugin extends JPlugin {
function onPrepareContent( &$row, &$params, $page=0 ) {
$row->text = preg_replace("/and/i", "or", $row->text);
}
}
?>
The first issue I ran into was a misconfiguration in and.xml -- I had copied the tutorial's XML file, which had the group set to system. As a result, it was never going to invoke the plugin for content. I fixed this by tweaking the XML to say:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<install version="1.5" type="plugin" group="content">
<name>And to Or</name>
<author>Ben Simon</author>
<authorEmail>questions@ideas2executables.com</authorEmail>
<authorUrl>http://www.ideas2executables.com/</authorUrl>
<version>1.0</version>
<description>Map all instances of And to Or</description>
<files>
<filename plugin="and">and.php</filename>
</files>
</install>
I uninstalled, and re-installed the plugin - still, no dice.
After poking around the code, and re-reading the tutorial, I realized I had named my file incorrectly. It needs to be named exactly: plg«Section»«Name». I fixed this by changing the code to say:
<?php
defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );
jimport( 'joomla.plugin.plugin' );
class plgContentAnd extends JPlugin {
function onPrepareContent( &$row, &$params, $page=0 ) {
$row->text = preg_replace("/and/i", "or", $row->text);
}
}
?>
For this change, I was able to just FTP the new source file in place and didn't have to bother with the uninstall/install dance. But still, no luck.
After even more poking around, I realized that the constructor that I thought superfluous, was in fact critical. Without adding the following line of code, the plugin never gets registered with the event system, and the onPrepareContent is never invoked. I fixed this like so:
<?php
defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );
jimport( 'joomla.plugin.plugin' );
class plgContentAnd extends JPlugin {
function plgContentAnd($subject, $config) {
parent::__construct($subject, $config);
}
function onPrepareContent( &$row, &$params, $page=0 ) {
$row->text = preg_replace("/and/i", "or", $row->text);
}
}
?>
Whew. With all these conventions noted - I'm officially on good terms with Joomla 1.5. Turns out, we're going to be friends after all.
.
