Joomla 4 – Joomla API

by Marc Dechèvre

woluweb

Marc

This presentation was done

Present slides https://slides.woluweb.be

video (English)

1. Please contribute

Help improving this presentation that will be converted to a Joomla Community Magazine article:

then please get back to me! ❤️💙🧡💚

1. How this presentation came to life

There have already been several presentations about the Joomla API.

They were certainly interesting (showing Postman, explaining how you can create a Smartphone App exchanging with your Joomla website, …) but I was always a bit frustrated because :

This changed on 23 September 2022 where I had the chance to be present at JoomlaDay D-A-CH (gathering several german-speaking countries, namely Germany – Austria – Switzerland). In particular Peter Martin gave an excellent “How to use APIs in your Joomla website?” (see links hereafter): At the end of his session, Peter would give a few little PHP scripts showing how to create or update Articles.

I asked to Peter whether he could share his scripts. He did even better: there is a new official website Joomla! Programmers Documentation with a page about Web Services and Peter made a Pull Request on Github to add the examples (see hereafter).

Coming back to Belgium, I was really excited to play with these examples.

Then I contacted Alexandre Elisé from Martinique, who is very passionate about the Joomla API and we elaborated on these examples. Indeed

So after several iterations over a few weeks, we ended up with a series of “little” scripts. The goal was indeed

So a long story short: this presentation aims at allowing a maximum of people to start using the Joomla API, which offers a strong competitive advantage compared to other CMS for example.

2. Resources

Peter Martin – “How to use APIs in your Joomla website?” at JoomlaDay D-A-CH on 2022.11.23

Joomla! Programmers Documentation (in construction)

Alexandre Elisé's series of scripts showcasing the Joomla API

3. How to get the Joomla API Token

Before using the Joomla API (and any of the scripts below) we need a Joomla API Token.

At the moment, the Joomla API Token can only be generated for Super Users. So be sure to keep it secret because any person having somehow access to that Token is de facto a Super User and can do everything on your website, including deleting everything.

3.1. Create a new User

Actually you could of course create a Joomla API Token for your own account.

But it is probably a good practice to create a distinct user

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3.2. Give a strong password

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3.3. Assign to the User Group Super User

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3.4. Go the Joomla API Token tab and Read

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3.5. Save

Now that you have saved the User, the Joomla API Token has been created… but for security reasons only that given user can see it (nobody else, not even other Super Users).

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3.6. Log in as the new User and copy the Token

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4. Create, Update, Fetch and Delete Joomla Articles with the API

4.1. Create Joomla Articles with the API

4.1.1. Terminology

Some basic terminology first: When using the Joomla API

4.1.2. See the Articles Manager

This is a fresh website so I see that “No Articles have been created yet”

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4.1.3. Prepare the POST script

Create your POST script on your website

Customize your POST script on your website

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Good to know: when you Create an article

4.1.4. Execute your script

Simply

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4.1.5. Go back to or refresh the Articles Manager

Tadam you can see that the Article was indeed created!

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4.2. Update Joomla Articles with the API

4.2.1. Prepare the PATCH script

The procedure is totally similar to the one of the previous script:

Create your PATCH script on your website

Customize your PATCH script on your website

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Good to know: when you Update an article

4.2.2. Execute your script

Simply execute your script as already explained above.

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4.2.3. Go back to or refresh the Articles Manager

When opening the Article, we can indeed check that

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4.3. Playing with Custom Fields

Adding a value to some Custom Field of an Article directly in the database using a query in PHPMyAdmin is not so obvious because it involves several Tables which are linked.

But as you will see, adding a value to some Custom Field of an Article via the Joomla API is super easy.

4.3.1. Create a Custom Field

In this example I create a Custom Field of Type “Text”

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4.3.2. Adapt the PATCH script

Now I need to edit my api-patch script as follows

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4.3.3. Execute your script

Simply execute your script as already explained above.

You already see on what is displayed that “temperature” is mentioned.

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4.3.4. Go back to or refresh the Articles Manager

When opening the Article, we can indeed check that

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4.4. Fetch Joomla Articles with the API

A good usecase for this script: an intranet or an app where one wants to display some news (articles) from your Joomla website

4.4.1. Prepare the GET script

Create your GET script on your website

Customize your GET script on your website

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4.4.2. Bonus 1: select another Category

In this example, we suppose we want to get all articles from Category 2

Of course, you can easily change the ID of the Category you need by adapting the following line of code:

$categoryId = 2;

4.4.3. Bonus 2: only get Published Articles

What is you only want to get Articles which are Published.

In the database, you probably know that technically being

So all we need to change in the script is to change

/content/articles?filter[category]=

into

/content/articles?filter[state]=1&filter[category]=

4.4.4. Execute the script

Simply execute your script as already explained above.

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4.5. Delete Joomla Articles with the API

Create your DELETE script on your website

Customize your DELETE script on your website

We don’t provide screenshots here. By now you know how it works!

5. Thank you

Peter Martin for his excellent presentation about the Joomla API which allowed me to finally dive into this topic

Alexandre Elisé for all the interesting chats about the Joomla API a.o. and for taking the time to provide a new script every time I was having a new idea of improvement!

Tim Davis for having me today on his YouTube Channel

So many members of the Joomla Community for being #jPositive

😉

6. Get in touch

https://slides.woluweb.be

Any suggestion about this presentation?
Please feel free to contact me. I’ll be happy to keep improving it 🙂

Marc Dechèvre | woluweb
+32 474 37 13 12 | +32 2 772 58 69

https://www.woluweb.be/contact

https://www.slideshare.net/woluweb