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Humanly possible
Written by
Lawrence
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
One of the benefits of Joomla 1.5 is that it is finally ending up with some manner of humanly readable URL structures. This is because Joomla, like Mambo, has suffered from ID related issues regarding menus and items inside the database.
The code base within Mambo 4.5.x and Joomla 1.0.x is based on a 'best guess' approximation in regards to finding a piece of data inside the database. Now that piece of data may be content, it may be images, it may be componentry, but it is still guessing it.
Within Joomla! 1.5, this changes, so that records within the content management system structure, either content, custom componentry or modules, are no longer guessed.
They are instead routed at the base level of the Joomla! 1.5 framework. This means the URI namespace can be built up in terms of a semantic hierarchy, where each level of the hierarchy addresses further into a particular part of a component.
This means the URI can be leveraged in terms of REST structures, providing a simplified URI map to a particular piece of content somewhere. It also finally resolves the issue of permalinkages within Joomla, which have posed a significant problem unto themselves with the ItemID/menuID issues.
As I have developed code elsewhere within enterprise level CMS systems apart from Joomla! and Mambo, the only caveat is that the backend / delelgation of links should in all instances resemble the frontend URI structure. This currently isn't scoped for Joomla! 1.5 There is a significant risk of multiple malformed URIs being mapped between components when editing in the backend administration portal of Joomla! if this is not addressed correctly. I've seen commercial closed source packages fail in this respect and it would be wise to keep frontend and backend URI management in sync.
The code base within Mambo 4.5.x and Joomla 1.0.x is based on a 'best guess' approximation in regards to finding a piece of data inside the database. Now that piece of data may be content, it may be images, it may be componentry, but it is still guessing it.
Within Joomla! 1.5, this changes, so that records within the content management system structure, either content, custom componentry or modules, are no longer guessed.
They are instead routed at the base level of the Joomla! 1.5 framework. This means the URI namespace can be built up in terms of a semantic hierarchy, where each level of the hierarchy addresses further into a particular part of a component.
This means the URI can be leveraged in terms of REST structures, providing a simplified URI map to a particular piece of content somewhere. It also finally resolves the issue of permalinkages within Joomla, which have posed a significant problem unto themselves with the ItemID/menuID issues.
As I have developed code elsewhere within enterprise level CMS systems apart from Joomla! and Mambo, the only caveat is that the backend / delelgation of links should in all instances resemble the frontend URI structure. This currently isn't scoped for Joomla! 1.5 There is a significant risk of multiple malformed URIs being mapped between components when editing in the backend administration portal of Joomla! if this is not addressed correctly. I've seen commercial closed source packages fail in this respect and it would be wise to keep frontend and backend URI management in sync.
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