Joomla – Alex Arriaga

alex-arriaga September 25, 2014

Introduction to Joomla! CMS – Session 1 (in spanish)

Why should I use a CMS?

When you start to create websites for information spreading or marketing purposes, one of the easiest and -probably- the best way to do it, is by using a Content Management System (CMS).

Why? Well, let me tell you some points about it:

SEO Friendly URLs
Modular and extensible
Easy user and group administration
Permission (privilegies) system
Template/theming support
Wizards based installation and upgrade
Minimal server requirements
Admin panel with multiple language support
Content hierarchy with unlimited depth and size
Components/modules for file managing with upload capabilities
Forums support (usually a huge community behind the scenes)
Some of then are open source (Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress)

How can I start?

Well, of course the official documentation helps a lot, but… sometimes is not as useful as we wanted at the beginning… so, here you have some videos about Joomla! I hope you find them a good starting point.

Video 1

During this video you are going to learn what is Joomla! when and why you should use a CMS. This course is focused on explain the necessary concepts about how Joomla! works, limitations and advantages, you don’t need to know how to program to take this course, the only thing you need is a little time.

This is a video with Joomla! 2.5 version stuff, Joomla! 3 videos are coming

alex-arriaga July 23, 2013

How to set directory and files permissions for a Joomla site in a production environment

GNU/Linux, Joomla, Operating Systems, Web Development 2 Replies

When you have a project created on Joomla CMS, you will need to protect your directories and files in order to avoid a possible attack or loosing information. During my time as a web developer and as a server admin in Government I learnt about what’s is a good configuration for setting permissions, for this reason I would like to share a list of commands that you can use in your own server. This set of commands apply to a GNU/Linux or UNIX-like operating systems, obviously I don’t recommend use IIS from Microsoft (I am sorry Microsoft, but PHP + IIS is NOT a good option).

In a nutshell, you can use these commands:

find /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
find /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755
chmod -R g+w /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY/images
chmod -R g+w /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY/cache
chmod -R g+w /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY/tmp

find /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

find /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755

chmod -R g+w /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY/images

chmod -R g+w /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY/cache

chmod -R g+w /YOUR_SERVER_PATH/YOUR_ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY/tmp

For example, if my SERVER_PATH is something like this: /var/www/ and my ROOT_JOOMLA_DIRECTORY is digital-newspaper, then we can use this commands:

# This line sets all files inside of digital-newspaper to "644" permissions
find /var/www/digital-newspaper -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

# Setting all directories to "755"
find /var/www/digital-newspaper -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755

# Special group permissions are necessary in images, cache and tmp directories
chmod -R g+w /var/www/digital-newspaper/images
chmod -R g+w /var/www/digital-newspaper/cache
chmod -R g+w /var/www/digital-newspaper/tmp

# This line sets all files inside of digital-newspaper to "644" permissions

find /var/www/digital-newspaper -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644

# Setting all directories to "755"

find /var/www/digital-newspaper -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755

# Special group permissions are necessary in images, cache and tmp directories

chmod -R g+w /var/www/digital-newspaper/images

chmod -R g+w /var/www/digital-newspaper/cache

chmod -R g+w /var/www/digital-newspaper/tmp

So, that’s it!

Be happy with your servers!

—

Alex Arriaga

alex-arriaga July 23, 2013

Reading an XML file by using Joomla 2.5 API – JFactory::getXML()

Joomla, PHP, Uncategorized, Web Development 2 Replies

Imagine the situation where you need to read a list of configuration permissions, these permissions are inside of an XML file called permisos.xml in a valid directory of your server. In this short article we will see how to read an XML file, parse it and create an array with all entries of this file. There are several ways to do this, but we will use the compatible option with Joomla 2.5 API, why? well, because Joomla 2.5 is the stable and recommended version -currently- of this CMS (Content Management System). So, please let me show you how to complete this task.

Next is a valid XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<permisos>
   <grupo id="8" nombre="Administrators">
         <modulo nombre="COM_ADMIN_ORDER_MOD" visible="true">
            <menu nombre="COM_ORDER_S" visible="true"></menu>
            <menu nombre="COM_REPORT" visible="true"></menu>
            <menu nombre="COM_USER_S" visible="true"></menu>
            <menu nombre="COM_SHOPPERGROUP_S" visible="true"></menu>
            <menu nombre="COM_COUPON_S" visible="true"></menu>
         </modulo>
   </grupo>
 	<grupo id="11" nombre="Team Members">
   		<modulo nombre="COM_ADMIN_ORDER_MOD" visible="false">
   			<menu nombre="COM_ORDER_S" visible="false"></menu>
   			<menu nombre="COM_REPORT" visible="true"></menu>
   			<menu nombre="COM_USER_S" visible="false"></menu>
   			<menu nombre="COM_SHOPPERGROUP_S" visible="false"></menu>
   			<menu nombre="COM_COUPON_S" visible="false"></menu>
   		</modulo>
	</grupo>
</permisos>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

</modulo>

</grupo>

</modulo>

</grupo>

</permisos>

Now, with this simple code we can read all this file using Joomla 2.5 classes and methods, in particular we will use the static method getXML() from JFactory.

$usuario =& JFactory::getUser();
$grupos_usuario = $usuario->groups;
$permisos = array();

	// Reading file
	$xmlfile = JURI::base().'/some_path/permisos.xml';
	$xml = JFactory::getXML($xmlfile,true);

	foreach($xml->children() as $grupo):
		$id_grupo_xml = $grupo->getAttribute("id");
		foreach($grupo->children() as $modulo):
			// Permissions by module
			foreach($grupos_usuario as $id_grupo):
				if(in_array($id_grupo_xml, $grupos_usuario))
					$permisos[$id_grupo][$modulo->getAttribute("nombre")] = $modulo->getAttribute("visible");
			endforeach;

			// Permissions for each menu entry in every one of the modules
			foreach($modulo->children() as $menu):
				foreach($grupos_usuario as $id_grupo):
					if(in_array($id_grupo_xml, $grupos_usuario))
						$permisos[$id_grupo][$menu->getAttribute("nombre")] = $menu->getAttribute("visible");
				endforeach;
			endforeach;
		endforeach;// all modules
	endforeach; // all groups

	echo "<pre>";
		print_r($permisos);
	echo "</pre>";

$usuario =& JFactory::getUser();

$grupos_usuario = $usuario->groups;

$permisos = array();

// Reading file

$xmlfile = JURI::base().'/some_path/permisos.xml';

$xml = JFactory::getXML($xmlfile,true);

foreach($xml->children() as $grupo):

$id_grupo_xml = $grupo->getAttribute("id");

foreach($grupo->children() as $modulo):

// Permissions by module

foreach($grupos_usuario as $id_grupo):

if(in_array($id_grupo_xml, $grupos_usuario))

$permisos[$id_grupo][$modulo->getAttribute("nombre")] = $modulo->getAttribute("visible");

endforeach;

// Permissions for each menu entry in every one of the modules

foreach($modulo->children() as $menu):

foreach($grupos_usuario as $id_grupo):

if(in_array($id_grupo_xml, $grupos_usuario))

$permisos[$id_grupo][$menu->getAttribute("nombre")] = $menu->getAttribute("visible");

endforeach;

endforeach;// all modules

endforeach; // all groups

echo "<pre>";

print_r($permisos);

echo "</pre>";

After reading content of the XML file we will get an output like this:

Array
(
    [8] => Array
        (
            [COM_ADMIN_ORDER_MOD] => true
            [COM_ORDER_S] => true
            [COM_REPORT] => true
            [COM_USER_S] => true
            [COM_SHOPPERGROUP_S] => true
            [COM_COUPON_S] => true
        )

)

Array

(

[8] => Array

(

[COM_ADMIN_ORDER_MOD] => true

[COM_ORDER_S] => true

[COM_REPORT] => true

[COM_USER_S] => true

[COM_SHOPPERGROUP_S] => true

[COM_COUPON_S] => true

)

As you can see, it is really easy to read XML files, if you have some comments about this, please let me know.

Be happy with your code!

—

Alex Arriaga

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Alex Arriaga

Category Archives:
Joomla

Introduction to Joomla! CMS – Session 1 (in spanish)

Why should I use a CMS?

How can I start?

Video 1

How to set directory and files permissions for a Joomla site in a production environment

Reading an XML file by using Joomla 2.5 API – JFactory::getXML()

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