I would like to share with you my findings and brief review of the new book Developing Extensions for Joomla! 5 by Carlos M. Cámara Mora. This will not be a long and competent review, but rather a very brief look at the book. If you are interested in extensive data, such as chapter lists, etc., you can find them on the website for this book: Developing Extensions for Joomla! 5.
First of all, it is worth mentioning that publishing a book in the field of technical literature is not easy in these rapidly changing times, and I would like to express my great admiration for the author.
This book is dedicated to the development of extensions for Joomla! and it is good to realise that a whole major version of the Joomla! system (Joomla! 4) was sacrificed in order to completely modernise the whole system, which brought a lot of negatives for Joomla! 4. It succeeded and we have a new version here - Joomla! 5, which has had this turbulent evolution and brings stability to Joomla!, but most importantly, a modern system.
And that modern system deserves a book. This book will help not only new developers who are not familiar with the Joomla! system, but also experienced developers who will be rewriting their extensions for this modern system.
Personally, I was very pleased with the division of logical units into individual chapters. The big chapter on component development has been split into backend and frontend. And the development of plugins and modules has also been divided into separate chapters. One of the most successful Joomla! libraries has also been given a chapter of its own, namely Forms. The additional chapters on Web Service API and CLI are also important. Everything is rounded off with very important chapters such as Template Overrides and Child Templates. Of course, the book includes a complete guide on how to develop extensions, so there is also a guide on how to distribute extensions, and there are also security practices, which is very important.
Although I haven't read all the chapters yet, I have to say that the book is very easy to read, everything is explained very well and simply. The author gets straight to the point, doesn't distract you unnecessarily and concentrates on the topic at hand.
So what can I say in conclusion? If I had to rate the book, I would give it the highest rating. If I were to recommend the book, I would recommend it to complete newcomers to Joomla! extension development, as well as established developers who need an explanation of the new modern techniques used in Joomla!
But most of all, I would like to thank the author for this book, which only underlines the fact that the Joomla! system, thanks to its modernisation, has once again become an interesting system for developing web applications.
Thank you very much.
Book Website: Developing Extensions for Joomla! 5