I have not read the WROX book except a brief overview in Borders and it
seemed ok.
Packt's book is very good for learning the basics of component
development. Initially, I did not get much out of it, but I found it a
handy, small reference guide later.
We(the NYC Joomla User Group) also have a copy of the Packt book in our
library, so if you would like to come to the next meeting in February
and borrow it, you can either return it at the meeting after that or
mail it back. The fee for borrowing is to write a review of the book on
our website(http://www.joomlanyc.org) as well as on Amazon or the
publishers website. :-)
Now, all of that said, these books are for /general/ Joomla component
development.
Login, User Validation, and Registration are in fact a somewhat
different kettle of fish. As both of these require somewhat specialized
knowledge of how the user database is configured. This also changes from
version to version in a small respect. Prior to Joomla 1.0.12
password's were stored in an encrypted manner in the database. From
1.0.13 onwards, the encryption method changed slightly.
Rather than writing a component for these areas, you have 2 other options.
Option 1:
For both Joomla 1.0.13 and Joomla 1.5, install Community Builder and
build a plugin for that. Community Builder exposes some events for
registration and logon that you can hook into if you wish to do
something at those points.
For Joomla 1.5 there is no need for CB as 1.5 will provide you it's own
event system for registration and logon.
The 1.5 system is much richer than the CB system, which stands to reason
since it was created afterwards. Note, you can't mix and match event
systems currently. CB will not trigger the Joomla events if someone is
logged on or registers through CB. And Joomla 1.5 doesn't trigger the
CB plugins when someone registers or logs on through there.(a place for
a good project: write a registration plugin for CB which triggers the
Joomla registration plugins - and a corresponding logon plugin which
triggers the CB logon plugins.
Note, after reviewing the 2 items, and I will need to do some testing
that keeps getting put off, I feel that the only workable process for
integrating CB and Joomla 1.5 is to send registrations through CB, thus
gaining the processing power of CB to do all sorts of extra things, but
have Joomla handle the logons - thus giving you the ability to use
Joomla logon plugins)
Mark Simko wrote:
PACKT Publishing has an excellent book: Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension
Development.
There is also Professional Joomla! from WROX
I can recommend both of them highly.
_______________________________________________
New York PHP SIG: Joomla! Mailing List
http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/joomla
NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online
http://www.nyphpcon.com
Show Your Participation in New York PHP
http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
