Codeigniter & Joomla Integration – Part 1
We ran into a situation a while ago that required us to use Joomla‘s user management, content management framework along side Codeigniter. After several failed attempts, we did find a sweet spot where Joomla was set up as a sub framework within codeigniter, and all custom code written within the Codeigniter classes would have access to Joomla API. This guide will assume that you are already familiar with both the frameworks in question and have a decent knowledge of PHP.
- Grab the latest versions of these frameworks from
- Extract the Joomla archive into the desired project folder and complete the installation.
- Extract the Codeigniter archive into a different folder and copy the application and system folders into the project folder.
- Rename the Joomla’s index.php file to index.php.bak
- Copy Codeigniter’s index.php file to the project folder.
- Copy all code before “// Mark afterLoad in the profiler. ” from the Joomla index.php into the new index.php file. Paste the code before “LOAD THE BOOTSTRAP FILE” comment.
- You final index.php should look something like below.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 | <!--?php /* *--------------------------------------------------------------- * APPLICATION ENVIRONMENT *--------------------------------------------------------------- * * You can load different configurations depending on your * current environment. Setting the environment also influences * things like logging and error reporting. * * This can be set to anything, but default usage is: * * development * testing * production * * NOTE: If you change these, also change the error_reporting() code below * */ define('ENVIRONMENT', 'development'); /* *--------------------------------------------------------------- * ERROR REPORTING *--------------------------------------------------------------- * * Different environments will require different levels of error reporting. * By default development will show errors but testing and live will hide them. */ if (defined('ENVIRONMENT')) { switch (ENVIRONMENT) { case 'development': error_reporting(E_ALL); break; case 'testing': case 'production': error_reporting(0); break; default: exit('The application environment is not set correctly.'); } } /* *--------------------------------------------------------------- * SYSTEM FOLDER NAME *--------------------------------------------------------------- * * This variable must contain the name of your "system" folder. * Include the path if the folder is not in the same directory * as this file. * */ $system_path = 'system'; /* *--------------------------------------------------------------- * APPLICATION FOLDER NAME *--------------------------------------------------------------- * * If you want this front controller to use a different "application" * folder then the default one you can set its name here. The folder * can also be renamed or relocated anywhere on your server. If * you do, use a full server path. For more info please see the user guide: * http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/managing_apps.html * * NO TRAILING SLASH! * */ $application_folder = 'application'; /* * -------------------------------------------------------------------- * DEFAULT CONTROLLER * -------------------------------------------------------------------- * * Normally you will set your default controller in the routes.php file. * You can, however, force a custom routing by hard-coding a * specific controller class/function here. For most applications, you * WILL NOT set your routing here, but it's an option for those * special instances where you might want to override the standard * routing in a specific front controller that shares a common CI installation. * * IMPORTANT: If you set the routing here, NO OTHER controller will be * callable. In essence, this preference limits your application to ONE * specific controller. Leave the function name blank if you need * to call functions dynamically via the URI. * * Un-comment the $routing array below to use this feature * */ // The directory name, relative to the "controllers" folder. Leave blank // if your controller is not in a sub-folder within the "controllers" folder // $routing['directory'] = ''; // The controller class file name. Example: <span class="hiddenSpellError" pre=""-->Mycontroller // $routing['controller'] = ''; // The controller function you wish to be called. // $routing['function'] = ''; /* * ------------------------------------------------------------------- * CUSTOM CONFIG VALUES * ------------------------------------------------------------------- * * The $assign_to_config array below will be passed dynamically to the * config class when initialized. This allows you to set custom config * items or override any default config values found in the config.php file. * This can be handy as it permits you to share one application between * multiple front controller files, with each file containing different * config values. * * Un-comment the $assign_to_config array below to use this feature * */ // $assign_to_config['name_of_config_item'] = 'value of config item'; // -------------------------------------------------------------------- // END OF USER CONFIGURABLE SETTINGS. DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS LINE // -------------------------------------------------------------------- /* * --------------------------------------------------------------- * Resolve the system path for increased reliability * --------------------------------------------------------------- */ // Set the current directory correctly for CLI requests if (defined('STDIN')) { chdir(dirname(__FILE__)); } if (realpath($system_path) !== FALSE) { $system_path = realpath($system_path).'/'; } // ensure there's a trailing slash $system_path = rtrim($system_path, '/').'/'; // Is the system path correct? if ( ! is_dir($system_path)) { exit("Your system folder path does not appear to be set correctly. Please open the following file and correct this: ".pathinfo(__FILE__, PATHINFO_BASENAME)); } /* * ------------------------------------------------------------------- * Now that we know the path, set the main path constants * ------------------------------------------------------------------- */ // The name of THIS file define('SELF', pathinfo(__FILE__, PATHINFO_BASENAME)); // The PHP file extension // this global constant is deprecated. define('EXT', '.php'); // Path to the system folder define('BASEPATH', str_replace("\\", "/", $system_path)); // Path to the front controller (this file) define('FCPATH', str_replace(SELF, '', __FILE__)); // Name of the "system folder" define('SYSDIR', trim(strrchr(trim(BASEPATH, '/'), '/'), '/')); // The path to the "application" folder if (is_dir($application_folder)) { define('APPPATH', $application_folder.'/'); } else { if ( ! is_dir(BASEPATH.$application_folder.'/')) { exit("Your application folder path does not appear to be set correctly. Please open the following file and correct this: ".SELF); } define('APPPATH', BASEPATH.$application_folder.'/'); } if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.1', '<')) { die('Your host needs to use PHP 5.3.1 or higher to run this version of Joomla!'); } /* * -------------------------------------------------------------------- * Load Joomla Libraries * -------------------------------------------------------------------- */ if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '5.3.1', '<')) { die('Your host needs to use PHP 5.3.1 or higher to run this version of Joomla!'); } define('_JEXEC', 1); if (file_exists(__DIR__ . '/defines.php')) { include_once __DIR__ . '/defines.php'; } if (!defined('_JDEFINES')) { define('JPATH_BASE', __DIR__); require_once JPATH_BASE . '/includes/defines.php'; } require_once JPATH_BASE . '/includes/framework.php'; /* * -------------------------------------------------------------------- * LOAD THE BOOTSTRAP FILE * -------------------------------------------------------------------- * * And away we go... * */ require_once BASEPATH.'core/CodeIgniter.php'; /* End of file index.php */ /* Location: ./index.php */ |
Edit the welcome.php under application/controllers to look like this
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 | <!--?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed'); class Welcome extends CI_Controller { /** * Index Page for this controller. * * Maps to the following URL * http://example.com/index.php/welcome * - or - * http://example.com/index.php/welcome/index * - or - * Since this controller is set as the default controller in * config/routes.php, it's displayed at http://example.com/ * * So any other public methods not prefixed with an underscore will * map to /index.php/welcome/<method_name--> * @see http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/urls.html */ public function index() { // Mark afterLoad in the profiler. JDEBUG ? $_PROFILER->mark('afterLoad') : null; // Instantiate the application. $app = JFactory::getApplication('site'); // Execute the application. $app->execute(); } } /* End of file welcome.php */ /* Location: ./application/controllers/welcome.php */ |
That’s it.
You should now have a Joomla site running inside the Codeigniter framework. Any routes not defined in application/config/routes.php will be handled by Joomla. Make sure you never create routes that match any Joomla directories 
Continue to Codeigniter & Joomla Integration – Part 2
Thanks for share it!
It helped me a lot! and I could apply it into my project soon.
One more suggestion, your website is responsive design, I think it is very good, but when my browser (chrome@MAC) window width is between (769px~1199px), the search input is overflow, just reminder you for it:)
@Rex Li. Thank you for the feedback. We have now rectified the issue
Hey I can access my joomla administrator, but I can’t access my homepage.
In my site showing title “This site is down for maintenance.
Please check back again soon.”, and showing login form.
How to fix it?
Can you screenshot your homepage?
Ups sorry, I can access now.
I canceled my question. Hehee.. 😀