Joomla create content plugin to add fields to article (com_content)

Question

Am a beginner to joomla development ,id like to add extra fields to the article (com_content)component. I have read this article https://docs.joomla.org/Adding_custom_fields_to_the_article_component However it does not fully answer my question on when / how to add the extra fields to the table _content table , and when to add the inserted data .Any help is greatly appreciated .

Answer 1

The easiest approach is to simply add the fields as additional properties of the attribs, so you don't need to handle database changes; the additional properties will be stored as a string representing a json object.

As you can see in the document you linked, <fields name="attribs"> is the container of all custom properties in the manifest file (the .xml), and it will automatically handle the persistance for you.

Positive connsiderations:

• you only create and inject the manifest, the framework handles the rest;
• there is no need for database changes

Negative considerations:

• Search requires you to handle the json structure of the attribs field
• Search will be incredibly slower unless you add json support to your database, and implement the proper indexes, which will put you in a non-default situation. This only applies with 1000+ articles or very slow hosting.