I will try to write my findings, tutorials and tweaks on Nooku in coming days. These are basically my writeup and is not affilated with Nooku or Joomla itself and If there are any errata, the blame is on me . You can even send me suggestion on topics for Blog and I will try to explain explain within my knowledge.

Creating Joomla Extensions is painstakingly rigorous task. As I am a Joomla! Extension developer myself, I know how painful it is to create an extension that works right since its first line of code. You have to be more patient to see every thing works as expected. And to add that there are many repetitive tasks that you cannot do without.  You have to create useless tables and check if the fields are sanitized before pushing it to database. You have to create a model even to get a single piece of data for controller to work with and the list goes on. But I loved Joomla then and I love it more with Nooku.

Why Nooku is better than Joomla! Core Framework?
Nooku is an answer to the above mentioned problems. You only write what you want your extension to do and nothing else. You can focus on what really matters: business logic and the user experience. Nooku does it all for you. But to be more specific on how Nooku can help you achieve what you wanted with less codes, here are the list

Object Oriented Design
Nooku harnesses OOP to its fullest and yes it works with PHP5 only. Please bear in mind initial releases of PHP5 still did not support full OOP and it is advised to use the latest PHP5 versions with Nooku that supports class autoloading, interfaces and visibility.

Design Patterns
Joomla 1.5 Framework followed Design patterns too but it is self evident that it does not utilizes the power of OOP with PHP 5 to its fullest. But nooku does that. Nooku harnesses  PHP 5 OOP and design patterns. Nooku Framework features a near zero-code MVC, an ORM with table behaviors, a powerful Chain of Command, an Object Factory with dependency injection, Lazy Loading, Mixins, Decorators, and more.

Security
Security is a major concern when creating Joomla extensions. You should be ready to sanitize every single input before storing or rendering it. But with Nooku, you can leave this rigorous task to framework itself. Nooku Framework provides excellent input filtering, and protects against CSRF automatically. This means more peace of mind.

Unparalled Extensibility
Yes Joomla! 1.5 Framework was a little stiff in nature but with Nooku you can extend any parts of core framework or extension created with Nooku. You can reuse a code you wrote in any number of extension you will write with nooku moreover you can even replace it with your own code if you want. Write you own adapters, dispatchers, filters; Nooku will help you do these without much pain.

Dynamic MVC
This means you need not write anything. Puzzled! Yes I was for the first time. This means you will write only those features that you think is unique to your application. You may not create models or controllers for generic tasks because nooku will create a controller and models for you in runtime without writing an actual code. How nooku does this? Well you need to ask Nooku for details but for now this magic is a result of OOP (Specially inheritance)  and Design Patterns as discussed above.

Drastic Code reduction
The above mentioned feature means, you have a drastic code reduction up to 70% and that too without loosing any functionality.

Intuitive API
Nooku is architecture done right and you can find symmetry in every piece of code you work with. You learn this consistent API once and apply everywhere. The API is easy to learn and more joy to work with.

Extremely Lightweight
Nooku Framework has no dependencies on PECL extensions or PEAR libraries or any other libraries. Large, monolithic libraries are avoided in favor of optimized solutions.

Made for Joomla
Nooku framework is made for Joomla! and lead by Johan Janssens, lead architect of Joomla 1.5 Framework itself. This is obviously a positive point for Nooku and developers.

Yes these features and more makes Nooku a perfect choice for Extension developers to write a future oriented extensions for Joomla. But bear in mind Nooku is under continuous development and little patience is expected from all users

I am also using Nooku for my extensions that will be out in near future. I hope you enjoyed the post and believe it will help you decide when and how to use Nooku.
Cheers!

Let us grab some essential tools to build and install Ruby

#sudo apt-get install build-essential

Installing Ruby, Documentation Generator (rdoc); We will need this later, and Openssl Library for Ruby

#sudo apt-get install ruby rdoc libopenssl-ruby

Setup RubyGems; This is ruby packaging system

#cd /tmp
#wget http://production.cf.rubygems.org/rubygems/rubygems-1.3.7.tgz
#tar zxvf rubygems-1.3.7.tgz
#cd rubygems-1.3.7
#ruby setup.rb
#ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/local/bin/gem

Install Rails (Rails is a framework that runs on Ruby; Don’t you think it should be Rails on Ruby)

#gem install rails

We will need MySQL too, so let us install MySQL gem (I am rich , see how many gems I have )

# sudo apt-get install ruby-dev libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient-dev
# gem install mysql

That is all for installation, you have almost everything to get you started with ROR. Hope it helped you get started with ROR

Recently I created a donation module for joomla that collects donations on Joomla sites. This module uses Paypal to collect donations and is simple to setup and you can get it up and running within a minute. This module is free to use and is released under GNU/GPL. You can see live demo of the module at www.joomlaguru.com.np.

Features

Version 1.0 has following features. You can view the parameters for this module. This module has rich set of configuration options as explained below.

Select Server - This has two options and lets user to select between live and sandbox environment on paypal.

Paypal Merchant  Email/ID - Paypal Email. You can also enter paypal merchant ID instead of paypal email. This increases security without exposing your email address.

Donate To Text - Configure text that is displayed on invoice and paypal donation collecting form.

Fixed Donation – You can choose to accept fixed donations or Donation through input box or a drop down box. If you select fixed donations, please enter donation amount in next field too. If you select “Show amount in select box” user is presented a drop down box with different denominations. These denominations can be configured from a file that is under modules->mod_osdonate->data->amounts.dat

Fixed Amount Donation – Fixed donation amount. This is used only when fixed_donation is active.

Your locale currency - Select currency in which you want to accept donation. Be advised this currency should be active in your paypal. If not this may cause error. You can add currencies in your paypal account. Please refer to paypal help on more about this.

Your Country locale - Select your country. This should be from your paypal account.

Thank you page – Select article that will be displayed when user makes a successful payment through paypal donation form.

Cancel Page – Select article that will be displayed when user cancels the payment.

Donation Intro Text - Text that will be displayed before paypal donate button. Be expressive and a little funny to your viewers.

Donation Post Text – Text that will appear after the donation button.

This is all you need to collect donations from your joomla site.

You can view more details about this module here. Also you can download the module here.

If you like this module consider contributing at Joomlaguru.com.np. Your small contribution can make a difference.

Happy reading!!

Features

1. Two modes

User can select to replace mootools with jQuery completely or use jQuery in conjunction with mootools. Using jQuery with mootools introduces noConflict features of jQuery and replaces ‘$’ operator with jquery. This allows other libraries to use ‘$’ operator without conflict.

2. Where to use selection

Use can select where to use jQuery. User can choose to use jQuery in frontend and/ or in administrator.

3. Allows other application to check if jquery is loaded.

This plugin also introduces a variable in application session that allows others to check if jquery is loaded or not. The illustration of use is as below\

    $app =& JFactory::getApplication();

        //Check to see if jquery is already included
        if( $app->get('jquery') === true ) {

            //Code here

        }
    else
    {

    //Code here

    }

Here is the screenshot of plugin parameters

License

The module is released under GNU/GPL license and hence users are allowed distribute and modify the module without warranty what so ever. The developer does not bear any liability for the extension.

Download

Download the latest release from the download section of joomlaguru.com.np or you can click here to download the plugin.

Send in your comments and feedbacks on the plugin. Hope you will like the plugin. Happy reading.

Features

Website ID – Website ID from Google Analytics. These website ID are unique to each website profile.index.php?option=com_content

Domain – Enter domain without http://www e.g. joomlaguru.com.np

Track – Select tracker type. User can select from tracker type. There are 3 types of tracker available.

1. Single Domain Tracker
   Tracker Tracks single domain only.
2. One Domain With Multiple Subdomains
   Tracker tracks multiple subdomains under single domain
3. Multiple Top Level Domains
   Tracker tracks multiple top level domains.

Download the plugin from the joomlaguru.com.np download page.

If you find this plugin useful please consider contributing. Your contribution can make a difference

Hope you like this plugin. Happy reading!!

I have already launched twitter box – a free and easy twitter module for joomla through Joomlaguru.com.np.

I hope overwhelming response from readers. Let us pray for its bright future.

Thanks
Sanjeev

JCal Pro is a fantastic extension to manage events on Joomla enabled Sites. Last week I used JCal Pro for a project and required some modification. JCal Pro is a great extension but lacks spam protection like CAPTCHA or any thing that stops spam posting. But I needed spam prevention in event posting, So I set out to add a CAPTCHA to the fantastic component.

I used reCpatcha as it is audio enabled, a free service and is also owned by google now. ReCaptcha has enabled more than 100,000 sites and I added one more to the list.

The component now has a reCaptcha for spam filtering and JCal Pro has a missing gem installed on it.
You can view a of modified JCal Pro here

I wanted to distribute this modified extension for free but cannot distribute it as it is developed and distributed by dev.anything-digital.com and the extension is subscription based.

However you can contact me for modified version of JCal Pro or if you want to add reCaptcha to your existing JCal Pro or any other extension. Yes I charge a little for my time.

Happy Reading.

If you find this post or modified JCal Pro Useful, please consider contributing. Your contribution can make a difference

The media manager is cool with multiple upload and that too with ajax but I could not get it running. Another inspiration for me

This is an opportunity and challenge for component developers like me to upgrade and update. I am getting my hands dirty on the new arrived code, better get yours too.

Download the latest release of joomla from here
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=3585

Happy coding with joomla.

I was sceptical if it will work for me or not and gave it a try. After feeding some information, I got an installable skeleton of my component. “Awesome”! yes, I said awesome for this tool. This installable component had everything from administrator files, config files, manifest files to router.php for SEF urls. I would recommend this to everyone. You can try it for yourself. This tool is created by notwebdesign.com and the location of tool is at http://www.notwebdesign.com/joomla-component-creator/index.php

I am using it for my all of my coming projects.