Getting Started

Installation

Note: The Joomlatools Console is designed to work on Linux and Mac OS X only. Windows users can use this tool in combination with our Joomlatools Vagrant box.

1. Install using Composer:

   composer global require joomlatools/console

2. Tell your system where to find the executable by adding the composer directory to your PATH. Add the following line to your shell configuration file called either .profile, .bash_profile, .bash_aliases, or .bashrc. This file is located in your home directory.

   export PATH="$PATH:~/.composer/vendor/bin"

3. Verify the installation

   joomla --version

Congratulations, you are now ready to use our joomla console tool.

Upgrading

To upgrade your existing installation, run the following command:

composer global require joomlatools/console --update-with-dependencies

Managing sites

Create a new Joomla site

To create a site with the latest Joomla version, run:

joomla site:create testsite

The newly installed site will be available at /var/www/testsite and testsite.test after that. You can login into your fresh Joomla installation using these credentials: admin / admin.

You can choose the Joomla version or the sample data to be installed. For example, to install Joomla 3.7.1 with the blog sample data, run this command:

joomla site:create testsite --release=3.7.1 --sample-data=blog

You can pick any branch from the Git repository (e.g. master, staging) or any version from 2.5.0 and up using this command.

The console stores the list of available Joomla versions in its cache. To list the available versions and refresh this cache, run the versions command:

joomla versions --refresh

Alternatively, you can add the --clear-cache flag to the joomla site:create command above to refresh before creating a site, so you always get the latest version.

For more information and available options, try running:

joomla site:create --help

Web server root

The web server root is set to /var/www. You can pass --www=/my/server/path to change the default path.

Components and extensions

Symlink your code into a Joomla installation

Note: Your code is assumed to be in ~/Projects directory. You can pass --projects-dir=/my/code/is/here to change the default path.

Your source code should match the Joomla directory structure for symlinking to work well. For example your administrator section should reside in ~/Projects/foobar/administrator/components/com_foobar.

Now to create a new site, execute the site:create command and add a symlink option:

joomla site:create testsite --symlink=foobar

Or to symlink your code into an existing site:

joomla extension:symlink testsite foobar

This will symlink all the directories from the foobar directory into testsite.test.

Run discover install to make your component available to Joomla and you are good to go!

For more information on the symlinker, run:

joomla extension:symlink  --help

Install Joomla extensions

You can use discover install on command line to install extensions.

joomla extension:install testsite com_foobar

You need to use the element name in your extension manifest.

For more information, run:

 joomla extension:install --help

Alternatively, you can install extensions using their installation package. Example:

joomla extension:installfile testsite /home/vagrant/com_foobar.v1.x.zip

This will install both the com_component.v1.x.zip packages.

Note: If symlinking or installing seems to fail, you can add the -v flag to every command to increase verbosity. This will give you more information about the actions going on in the background.