Extend Joomla Authentication to plain HTML page?

Question

I have a few pages with custom forms that interact with a database on the backend. However; none of the plugins that were meant to embed your PHP code inside of a Joomla article worked well enough. (They could not perform update queries.) In the end, the only reasonable thing was to create a few plain .php pages. However; these forms can be used to list tenants and their personal information. I need a way of restricting access to these pages to only registered Joomla users.

Is this possible? Alternatively, a library would also work fine. They do not need to be logged into the Joomla site for any reason other than these forms; so they could authenticate any other way. I just figured Joomla would be the easiest. Could it be as simple as placing the .php files inside a certain directory?

Thank you,

Jesse

Answer 1

You could try something like this.

<?php

    define( '_JEXEC', 1 );

    // defining the base path.
    define(JPATH_BASE,  $_SERVER[ 'DOCUMENT_ROOT']);
    require_once (JPATH_BASE .'/includes/defines.php' );
    require_once( JPATH_BASE .'/includes/framework.php' );

    // Creating an app instance 
    $app =& JFactory::getApplication('site');
    $app->initialise();

    jimport( 'joomla.user.user' );
    jimport( 'joomla.user.helper' );
    $user = JFactory::getUser();    
    $createdby = $user->id;

    if ($createdby == 0){
        // get the heck out of dodge! 
        echo "Opps, looks like you are not logged in.";
    }
    else {
        // else we are logged in and we can show the form
        echo "hello world, my form would go here.";


    }
?>

That might get you going for now.

However, I think a better approach would be to use a Joomla component builder to create basically an empty component that you could then plug your forms into. That would ensure you are following a proper Joomla MVC structure and using the authentication features correctly. Take a look at Joomla Component Creator to see an example of that type of tool.

HTH