Joomla

Joomla! is an award-winning content management system (CMS) which enables you to build web sites and powerful online applications.

Lando offers a configurable recipe for developing Joomla (opens new window) apps.

• Getting Started
• Configuration
  • Choosing a php version
  • Choosing a composer version
  • Choosing a web server
  • Choosing a database backend
  • Using xdebug
  • Using custom config files
• Connecting to your database
• Importing Your Database
• Tooling

Getting Started

Before you get started with this recipe we assume that you have:

1. Installed Lando and gotten familiar with its basics
2. Initialized a Landofile for your codebase for use with this recipe
3. Read about the various services, tooling, events and routing Lando offers.

However, because you are a developer and developers never ever RTFM (opens new window), you can also run commands to try out this recipe with a vanilla install of Joomla as shown below:

# Initialize a joomla recipe using the latest Joomla version
lando init \
  --source remote \
  --remote-url https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla3/3-9-2/Joomla_3-9-2-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz \
  --recipe joomla \
  --webroot . \
  --name my-first-joomla-app

# Start it up
lando start

# List information about this app.
lando info

Configuration

While Lando recipes set sane defaults so they work out of the box, they are also configurable.

Here are the configuration options, set to the default values, for this recipe's Landofile. If you are unsure about where this goes or what this means, we highly recommend scanning the recipes documentation to get a good handle on how the magicks work.

recipe: joomla
config:
  php: '7.2'
  composer_version: '2.0.7'
  via: apache:2.4
  webroot: .
  database: mysql:5.7
  xdebug: false
  config:
    database: SEE BELOW
    php: SEE BELOW
    server: SEE BELOW
    vhosts: SEE BELOW

Note that if the above config options are not enough, all Lando recipes can be further extended and overriden.

Choosing a php version

You can set php to any version that is available in our php service. However, you should consult the Joomla requirements (opens new window) to make sure that version is actually supported by Joomla itself.

The recipe config to set the Joomla recipe to use php version 7.1 is shown below:

recipe: joomla
config:
  php: '7.1'

Choosing a composer version

You can set composer_version to any version that is available in our php service.

recipe: backdrop
config:
  composer_version: '1.10.1'

Choosing a web server

By default, this recipe will be served by the default version of our apache service but you can also switch this to use nginx. We highly recommend you check out both the apache and nginx services before you change the default via.

With Apache (default)

recipe: joomla
config:
  via: apache

With nginx

recipe: joomla
config:
  via: nginx

Choosing a database backend

By default, this recipe will use the default version of our mysql service as the database backend but you can also switch this to use mariadb or 'postgres' instead. Note that you can also specify a version as long as it is a version available for use with lando for either mysql, mariadb or postgres.

If you are unsure about how to configure the database, we highly recommend you check out the mysql, mariadband 'postgres' services before you change the default.

Also note that like the configuration of the php version, you should consult the Joomla requirements (opens new window) to make sure the database and version you select is actually supported by Joomla itself.

Using MySQL (default)

recipe: joomla
config:
  database: mysql

Using MariaDB

recipe: joomla
config:
  database: mariadb

Using Postgres

recipe: joomla
config:
  database: postgres

Using a custom version

recipe: joomla
config:
  database: postgres:9.6

Using xdebug

This is just a passthrough option to the xdebug setting that exists on all our php services. The tl;dr is xdebug: true enables and configures the php xdebug extension and xdebug: false disables it.

recipe: joomla
config:
  xdebug: true|false

However, for more information we recommend you consult the php service documentation.

Using custom config files

You may need to override our default Joomla config (opens new window) with your own.

If you do this, you must use files that exist inside your application and express them relative to your project root as shown below:

Note that the default files may change based on how you set both ssl and via. Also note that the vhosts and server config will be either for apache or nginx depending on how you set via. We highly recommend you check out both the apache and nginx if you plan to use a custom vhosts or server config.

A hypothetical project

Note that you can put your configuration files anywhere inside your application directory. We use a config directory but you can call it whatever you want such as .lando in the example below:

./
|-- config
   |-- default.conf
   |-- my-custom.cnf
   |-- php.ini
   |-- server.conf
|-- index.php
|-- .lando.yml

Landofile using custom joomla config

recipe: joomla
config:
  config:
    database: config/my-custom.cnf
    php: config/php.ini
    server: config/server.conf
    vhosts: config/default.conf

Connecting to your database

Lando will automatically set up a database with a user and password and also set an environment variable called LANDO INFO that contains useful information about how your application can access other Lando services.

The default database connection information for a Joomla site is shown below:

Note that the host is not localhost but database.

database: joomla
username: joomla
password: joomla
host: database
# for mysql
port: 3306
# for postgres
# port: 5432

You can get also get the above information, and more, by using the lando info command.

Importing Your Database

Once you've started up your Joomla site, you will need to pull in your database and files before you can really start to dev all the dev. Pulling your files is as easy as downloading an archive and extracting it to the correct location. Importing a database can be done using our helpful lando db-import command.

# Grab your database dump
curl -fsSL -o database.sql.gz "https://url.to.my.db/database.sql.gz"

# Import the database
# NOTE: db-import can handle uncompressed, gzipped or zipped files
# Due to restrictions in how Docker handles file sharing your database
# dump MUST exist somewhere inside of your app directory.
lando db-import database.sql.gz

You can learn more about the db-import command over here

Tooling

By default, each Lando Joomla recipe will also ship with helpful dev utilities.

This means you can use things like joomla, composer and php via Lando and avoid mucking up your actual computer trying to manage php versions and tooling.

lando composer          Runs composer commands
lando db-export [file]  Exports database from a service into a file
lando db-import <file>  Imports a dump file into database service
lando joomla            Runs joomla commands
lando mysql             Drops into a MySQL shell on a database service
lando php               Runs php commands

Usage examples

# Get joomla cli help
lando joomla -h

# Clear the joomla cache
lando joomla cache:clear

# Run composer tests
lando composer test

# Drop into a mysql shell
lando mysql

# Check the app's installed php extensions
lando php -m

You can also run lando from inside your app directory for a complete list of commands. This is always advisable as your list of commands may not be 100% the same as above. For example, if you set database: postgres you will get lando psql instead of lando mysql.