Joomla 3.x ACL/perms documentation

[tplehman]

really this is completely missing,

for example:

on J! 3.1.5/CiviCRM 4.4.3, at /administrator/?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/admin/access&reset=1

there is a link at top right: Access Control documentation links to : http://book.civicrm.org/user/initial-set-up/access-control

there is no content at that url,

I have searched CiviCRM site, and there is some Jommla ACL docs,   .....   FOR Joomla 1.5!!!!???

with all due respect, WTF?

Also on the same J! 3.1.5/civiCRM 4.4.3 system, all attempts to run crons from URL, or php-cli result in :

PHP Fatal error:  Interface 'JObservableInterface' not found in /home/redacted/public_html/libraries/joomla/table/table.php

CSV imports of more than ~3000 contact records results in fatal error, NOT having to do with php execution time limits.

I could go on and on.

I am not impressed.

I have worked on a Civi/Drupal system that was far more stable.

You should really add a disclaimer, like 'YOUR mileage may vary" when you tell people that civiCRM works with Joomla.

Just saying...

=-(

[tplehman]

Just to be fair, I have seen some patches for at least the cli/cron issue, but there seems NOT to be an updated j! 3.x.x extension update as of yet.

and the doc links that go nowhere are a serious obstacle.

I am stuck with civi for my current project, but I would NOT recommend a Joomla 3.x integration as stable, really not even good beta.

Joomla really sucks in many ways, and that is not CiviCRM's fault, but don't tell me its a mink coat when its a dyed skunk.

[lcdweb]

A few thoughts:

• your tone isn't likely to elicit much sympathy. just sayin'
• the documentation undergoes regular updates, and yes -- as a result -- sometimes the links from the application get out of sync. the correct link is: http://book.civicrm.org/user/current/initial-set-up/permissions-and-access-control/
• yes, there still is some documentation for J1.5. and yes, people still use J1.5 with Civi. however, the documentation per the above is correctly for J2.5+
• Joomla has gone through numerous updates over the last couple years, and their whole long-term vs. short-term release model has made it challenging to effectively keep up. in general, CiviCRM has adopted a policy of maintaining compatibility with Joomla's long term release (not uncommon in the Joomla 3rd party extension world), while making some effort to accommodate the latest short term release.
• practically speaking, what that currently means is that every CiviCRM release is tested against Joomla 2.5.x for compatibility. where resources and community contributions permit, we are also compatible with Joomla 3.2.x. currently there are no known issues against J3.2.x (that I'm aware of), but it doesn't go through quite as much testing as the J2.5.x releases.
• You are running 3.1.x -- so that will fall into the "unknown" land. I suspect it will run fine. But you are outside of the compatibility window, so don't be surprised if there are minor issues.
• a major caveat to the above -- as with all 3rd party Joomla extensions, there's always some lag time when new J versions are released that require changes in extensions. for example, in J2.5.18 they implemented a new password hashing mechanism (also introduced in J3.2.2) that broke things like the CLI authentication mechanism. guess what -- there were a lot of other 3rd party extensions that also broke as a result of that change, and so there's a lag while the issue is investigated, code written and tested, and then implemented into the next release. so dependencies between these various tools can create challenges.

specific to your issues -- the cron/cli is most likely because you're running an older version of Joomla. the conditional statements that handle some of the includes assume either 2.5.x or latest release (3.2.x). so you will need to debug.

re: CSV imports --
documentation does warn that there are scalability limits to imports (see suggestions here: http://book.civicrm.org/user/current/common-workflows/importing-data/). that almost entirely has to do with how your server is setup, and how your resources are allocated (specifically memory available, and the two PHP settings -- memory_limit and max_execution_time). so don't be surprised if you hit timeout limits. and if you do -- either follow the suggested workarounds or get a better server environment.

[tplehman]

lcdweb:

Thanks for your honesty, and I DO appreciate that this is a commmunity supported project, but it is not a major amount of work to fix a broken url on the doc server.

However, I still maintain that
    1)  all I asked for was a disclaimer that "Your mileage may vary", it seems to me that your reply serves as such.

    2)  the default permissions for anonymous users, i.e. (events and mailing-lists) did not work as documented, (I was able to change them and get it working) and the interface to manage this core integration functionality has a large number of objects to manage that have less than truly meaningful names.  This is a problem for me to support when a client admin calls and says "well, what do I change to make the events show up.  The doc link don't werk?!"

    3)  It's not usually trivial to upgrade joomla, even to the next minor version, and have your customized template still work.  This means I'm stuck, if fixes are only good for !J3.2.x. 

    4) I forgot to mention that using sql queries instead of CSV files mostly solved the import contacts issues, although I need to better understand how imported data really works in terms of contact relationsships like "employee-of" or similar, as had much better results when ignoring these relationships on the first import and then updating them in subsequent imports.

That being said, I will try to be less of a dumb-ass in future.

I will say, that you did address most of my issues by pointing out that 3.1.5 is not really supported, civi wants 3.0.x not 3.1.x.

And you were nice enough to give me some useful information, even if you were annoyed at my flames.

So, Thank you again.