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In this article we discuss the outlines of building a custom backend Joomla component structured on the MVC model.

The details and complete code are covered in the members area

We make a component that will write text to a text file. The user will enter the text in the component administrator interface. We shall name the component mytext. We will use our localhost installation to develop the component.

Step 1

Make a folder called com_mytext in the admin components folder.

administrator/components /com_mytext

Step 2

Create the component entry file. This is a php file with the name admin.mytext

administrator/components/com_mytext/admin.mytext.php

This file invokes the controller class and performs the requested task

// Create the controller
$classname = 'mytextController'.$controller;
$controller = new $classname( );

// Perform the Request task
$controller->execute( JRequest::getVar( 'task' ) );

Step 3

Create the controller file

administrator/components/com_mytext/controller.php

Here we extend the standard Jcontroller class by adding specific functions we want to perform. For example we may wish to add an edit function.

class mytextController extends JController

function edit()
{
JRequest::setVar( 'view', 'mytext' );
JRequest::setVar( 'layout', 'form' );
JRequest::setVar('hidemainmenu', 1);

parent::display();
}

Step 4

Make a folder called models and the model php file

administrator/components/com_mytext/models

Here we create the file mytext.php

administrator/components com_mytext/models/mytext.php

Our model file will deal with the file handling. We extend the standard JModel class. In this case we will use PHP file handling routines to open our text file and write new text to the file

Example

class mytextModelmytext extends JModel

function getFile()
{
$file=JPATH_SITE.DS."mytext.txt";
$fh = fopen($file, 'r');
$this->_text=fread($fh, filesize($file));

fclose($fh);

return $this->_text;
}

Step 5

Create a folder views

administrator/components/com_mytext/views

Create the view file.

administrator/components/ com_mytext/views/view.html.php

The view file gets data from the model and passes it into the view output (template) file.

Step 6

Create a folder called tmpl

administrator/components com_mytext/views/tmpl

Create the template view file eg form.php

administrator/components/com_mytext/views/tmpl/form.php

The template view file displays the output and accepts input from the user. In our eaxmple we use an html form for this. The form will display the current text and allow the user to enter the new text. The form action method will invoke the corresponding action from the controller file.

Step 7

Create the install xml file

administrator/components/com_mytext/mytext.xml

Here we tell the Joomla installer what files exist for this component

In our example we will manually install this component.

Step 8

After testing your component locally, FTP the folders and files to the actual Joomla site

Step 9

Register the component in the database (jos_components)

That concludes this article on creating a custom back-end Joomla MVC component.