Integrating an existing API with PHP/mySQL to Joomla for inventory Management

Question

I have implemented an API on my server with PHP/mySQL to create products, categories, orders etc.For the sake of testing i had been testing the whole system with Postman.

At this stage of the project i need an admin site like inventory/order management. I have no experience wit h Joomla but i watched some tutorials and read the documentation.I experimented with the extension Spider Catalog Component but i am not sure if i can fully customise it according to my already existing database tables and entry points. Do i need to create my own extension for that purpose? If yes how complicated would it be? Does anyone have experience with that ?

Answer 1

I think it would be counter-productive to attempt to rewrite a Joomla component to push and pull data in and out through your api endpoints. I think rather you have several options depending on your needs and abilities.

1. Install an appropriate 3rd party Joomla component and rewrite your API to push data into the default db tables of the component and delete your own db tables. Obviously you will need to make sure you maintain the data integrity of the component, but you don't need to worry about rewriting the component. If your system is generic enough this could totally work.

2. If all you need is a set of html tables and forms then you can use a joomla form component to map to your db fields - chronoforms and rsforms both do this quite well. For the table display just makes some custom php modules or something. This option would be easier if you already know your way around Joomla. If you don't really want to use Joomla for any reason then I would recommend that you use Laravel or just hacked up PHP if your building a totally custom thing.

3. If you like javascript and are a little nuts then you should totally build your admin interface in pure javascript and then use the Joomla com_ajax interface - link to doc - to push data into a custom module helper ajax method and then push the data from there into your api endpoints. I would do this cause I really like javascript and tangled mess.