create-joomla-extension

Joomla 4 instant extension scaffolding

Prerequisites

• Node/npm
• PHP server: anything from XAMP, MAMP, or a Docker solution will do as long as it got the latest PHP/Mysql and either Apache/Nginx (Always prefer Nginx)

Basic commands

• navigate to the folder that will be the base for your extension(s) through CLI
• run npx @dgrammatiko/create-joomla-extension
• Answer the basic questions for the repeated replacable string (alternative a file named user-info.json could be copy/pasted in the same path)
• The user-info.json has the following content (if accepting the defaults):

{
  "namespace": "Dgrammatiko",
  "userName": "Dimitrios Grammatikogiannis",
  "userEmail": "d.grammatiko@gmail.com",
  "userURL": "https://dgrammatiko.dev",
  "userLicense": "GNU General Public License version 3 or later",
  "userCopyright": "(C) {{currentYear}} Dimitrios Grammatikogiannis"
}

• Following steps are:
• • Choose the extension type: Component, Module, Library, Plugin or Template
• • Modules and Templates need to be defined as Site or Administrator
• • Plugins need to be defined as their type, ie System, Content, etc

That's that. The extension basic files will be automatically created.

You can repeat the process to get more extensions...

Once you're ready you need to run npm install to get the needed tools. Then npm run init

For the assets compilation/transpiling you could run npm run build && npm run link (npm run link is needed whenever more folders are introduced)

Finally run npm run release to get a distributable zip file.

The concept

This is CLI tool that will generate a basic boilerplate of a component, module, plugin, library, template. The command is expected to be run inside a directory that will become the source of your code. It will generate a folder structure like:

  --src (directory for the PHP files)
  |
  |-- components
  |   |
  |   |-- component xxx (com_xxx)
  |
  |-- libraries
  |   |
  |   |-- library yyy
  |
  |-- modules
  |   |
  |   |-- admin
  |   |   |
  |   |   |-- module zzz (mod_zzz)
  |   |
  |   |-- site
  |       |
  |       |-- module www (mod_www)
  |
  |-- plugins
  |   |
  |   |-- Type
  |       |
  |       |-- plugin uuu (plg_type_uuu)
  |
  |-- templates
  |   |
  |   |-- admin
  |   |   |
  |   |   |-- template aaa (tpl_aaa)
  |   |
  |   |-- site
  |       |
  |       |-- template bbb (tpl_bbb)

-- www
   |
   |-- Joomla instance (needs to be linked to the directory of your local web server (NGINX, etc)

The user journey:

  graph TD;
      existing-JSON-file-->extension-type;
      first-questions-->generate-JSON-file;
      first-questions-->extension-type;
      generate-JSON-file-->extension-type;
      extension-type-->admin-site;
      extension-type-->plugin-type;
      admin-site-->create-scaffold;
      plugin-type-->create-scaffold;
      create-scaffold-->npm-install;
      npm-install-->npm-run-init;
      npm-run-init-->npm-run-build;
      npm-run-build-->npm-run-link;      

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