sfJoomlaBridge

sfJoomlaBridge is a symfony plugin that provides a bridge between a Joomla and a Symfony application. It allows to display symfony pages into Joomla.

It adds a new helper class: Joomla with 2 main functions :

• link_to_joomla($module_action), to make a link to another symfony page (action/module) but in the Joomla application context.
• form_tag_joomla($internal_uri = ' ', $options = array()), to declare a form that will be submitted to Symfony in Joomla context.
• import_sf_resources(), used internally by the plugin to add specific Symfony resources (Ajax js for example)

Installation

• Install the plugin

    symfony plugin-install http://plugins.symfony-project.com/sfJoomlaBridgePlugin

or download it and unzip in your /plugins directory

• Copy the files in /web/sfJoomlaBridge directly to your application /web directory (com_symfony folder should be now in the web/components/ directory of Joomla)

• Clear your cache

    symfony cc

Configuation

Joomla component

• In web/components/com_symfony, open symfony.html.php, line 8 modify the name of Symfony controller file (frontoffice.php by default). Take care to use a production controller, because we should't have any debug information.

• Un-comment line 34 with file_get_contents if you don't have curl installed on you web server, and comment the curl related lines above.

• In /web/index.php of Joomla main controller

before (near line 114)

// mainframe is an API workhorse, lots of 'core' interaction routines
$mainframe = new mosMainFrame( $database, $option, '.' );
$mainframe->initSession();

add

//Before Joomla initialize its mainframe, lets play…
// check missing component — added before $mainframe is being initialized
//##########################
if (!file_exists($mosConfig_absolute_path . '/components/'. $option )) { 
    $option = 'com_symfony';  
    //set component to com_cake if a controller is not found.
}

Symfony

• First you need to modify the absolute path of the Joomla controller in /plugins/sfJoomlaBridgePlugin/config/config.php, by default it's /index.php

• Views : If your symfony application will only be used inside the Joomla application, you can disable the layout globally in apps/app/config/view.yml

  has_layout:     off

Or it is not the case, you can disable the layout for some pages (view.yml of concerned module)

• We need to enable a new filter specific for this plugin. Open /plugins/sfJoomlaBridge/config/_filter.yml and copy paste the content after the common filter of the filter.yml of you application, at this point your file should look like this :

rendering: ~
web_debug: ~
security:  ~

# generally, you will want to insert your own filters here

cache:     ~
common:    ~

joomla:
  class: sfCommonJoomlaFilter
  param:
    head_tag: head_joomla

flash:     ~
execution: ~

• In the template there is a special tag that will be used by the filter

<head_joomla></head_joomla>

In fact this tag will be used (and replaced) to add dynamically specific web resources for Symfony (js, css). You can modify this tag in filter.yml by modifying the head_tag parameter of the joomla filter. If your template doesn't need any resource, you can ignore it.

Usage

• 1 - You need to declare the following helpers (or use the default helpers loaded parameter in you settings.yml) :

  <?php use_helper('Asset', 'Javascript', 'Joomla', 'Tag'); ?>
  

• 2 - To make a link to another symfony page, in this case to the module index and the users action.

  <?php echo link_to_joomla('Users list', 'index/users'); ?>
  

• 3 - To declare a form that will be handled by Symfony, in this case form will be submitted to validateCreate action of users module

  <?php echo form_tag_joomla('users/validateCreate', array(
    'id'        => 'sf_admin_create_form',
    'name'      => 'sf_admin_create_form',
  )) ?>
  

Changelog

0.8.0

• Can handle Symfony forms now (GET method)
• Allow standard use of Symfony Ajax helpers
• New specific filter
• New helpers to add sf resources dynamically

0.7.0

• Initial version

Demo

• You can find a demo on my blog
• You can find a more complete tutorial in the snippets section of my blog

Notes

• This plugin is still beta.
• I am searching beta testers to get some feeback. (C0il on IRC on, comment on my blog or whatever you want !)

TODO

• JoomlaPager?

COil :)