Joomla console – A command line interface for Joomla developers

The Problem

Testing Joomla extensions can be a tedious task. You need to setup different versions of Joomla, install yours extensions, configure Joomla, run different tests … etc. Doing all this manually is very laborious and  time consuming.

At Joomlatools we are testing almost daily and had to come up with a better way to quickly and automatically install Joomla sites. Meet, Joomla Console^[1].

Joomla Console

Joomla Console is a command line console for common Joomla operations, like creating and deleting sites, installing extensions, symlinking files etc.

Here is a little video showing how to use it to setup a Joomla site with just one command.

The console is build on the awesome Symfony Console^[2] package. It can do quite a lot. Below is an overview of the basic commands we have added so far.

How does it work ?

You can create as many Joomla sites as you want using the simple “joomla site:create” command. You want to test your extension with the latest released version? Just run “joomla site:create testsite”.

Maybe you would like to help out with Joomla development and testing and ensure your extension latest and greatest features will work with the next Joomla release? Just run “joomla site:create testsite –joomla=3.3-dev” Easy!

Don’t need a site anymore ? No problem you can discard and delete it at any time. Running “joomla site:delete oldsite” will remove it completely, including the database.

Need to install multiple extensions ? We got you covered. Extensions can be installed from the command line by running “joomla extension:install site com_my_extension” Nifty huh!

Try it yourself

Is that all ? Nope! The console has some more tricks up its sleeve.  Make sure to check out the detailed README ^[3] for more information on other commands.

To install go to https://github.com/joomlatools/joomla-console^[4] and follow the install instructions to setup your own Joomla Console.

Happy coding!