NYCPHP Meetup

[Mark Simko]

I'm looking through the developer section of the Joomla website,
researching components, and specifically the 'hello world' section.

There is a reference in the admin.hello.php file that is explained as
such:

We then include the file that will support the presentation layer.
$mainframe is a global variable in Joomla that has lots of useful
methods attached to it.  One of these methods is getPath.  It helps you
find common types of files.  In this instance we want the
admin.hello.html.php file to be include, so we pass 'admin_html' to the
getPath method.

I'm looking now for documentation on the $mainframe global variable,
although it seems to me that this is more an object. I'm trying to
understand how it is used, because the expample given above is like
saying 'if this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium.' I just don't follow
the logic, and looking through the reference might help me understand
what is going on.

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Perhaps I don't need to do any of this. I'm looking for a component that
will let me make tables in the component section of a web page. It
should draw its info from tables in the database, so I'll need
relational queries, and there should be a way to make forms so that
earthlings (administrators) will be able to change that data when
necessary. Is there anything out there that I can use without having to
adapt what I currently have to be a Joomla component?

==============

Is it necessary for me to know what is going on with the $mainframe
global variable, or is just serving as a distraction right now that I
can just as easily ignore until another time?

Thanks
Mark