TO: Dan Rahmel or whom it may concern:


RE: Source Code Referenced in Pro J! is Inaccurate


I understand that the Joomla framework has extensively been modified since this book was authored; however, the com_guestbook and com_productinfo extensions are broken.

I was working my way through the book, and the module examples worked fine. However, I have combed over the source repeatedly and confirmed that their are no 'little' errors (single quotes instead of double, commas instead of periods, spelling, etc).

Upon installing the com_productinfo extension, it provides an error saying that the install.sql file is not configured properly. However, it is typed verbatim, as per the source you provide in your book.

And, the Guestbook component provides multiple errors. I have yet to try any of the extensions described after the productinfo ext., but I will test them out over the next few days. Hopefully, I'll be able to get some of them running...

Once I know that this forum is still active and that the author, or Wrox, is still providing support for their material, I will provide more detailed information regarding the error messages.

Albeit, Dan, I must say... Considering you authored this book when Joomla 1.5 was not fully stable, I truly understand why these little complications arise. With that said, even with these minor errors, I greatly appreciate the time and effort you put into this book. It surely couldn't have been easy to write a book about something that wasn't stable.

So, anyone who can provide any insight and / or advice, I will greatly appreciate your time and assistance in this matter.

Furthermore, if you have got the source code to work on J! 1.5.6+, please let me know. Because, as we all know, you can proofread a script several times over, just to find out that it was only one character that was causing the entire script to fail (however, I don't believe this is the case, but I always try to leave room for my own mistakes (lol) ).


Sincerely,



Joseph Johnson
CIO, FreeNetCo, Inc.

Hm, I have done the com_guestbook chapter and aside from having to correct some of my own silly errors, it worked fine for me. There are a couple of 'warnings' (like the closing tag for the table is in the php code) but nothing that stops the code from operating.
What are you using to debug your code?

I was using the default text editor in Ubuntu, which does syntax highlghting and line numberig; but it didn't contain a debugger. Since then I've changed over to Eclipse and it's been working beautifully for me.

However, I'm still having a problem with some of the latter extensions; yet, the source code files that I downloaded all worked... So, apparently the problem lies within my code. However, I haven't had the time to check out my files, yet.

Anyways, thanks for your response.


Sincerely,



Joseph "Dro" Johnson
FreeNetCo, Inc.