Possible? Tie Joomla site registration directly into CiviMember

[ferkee]

OK..A few days ago, I saw mention of the desire to have CiviMember and Joomla's Registration...and those posts were from 2007.  I am just wondering as of CiviCRM 2.0.3 on Joomla 1.5 (shhhh...don't say it...I know it's not supported) if this "feature" is available/possible?

If not, has anybody done anything behind the scenes to take somebody directly from one process to the other? 

Just curious.

John

[Matt2000]

Do you want a CiviMember sign-up to generate a CMS user, or vice versa?

Under Drupal, I can already include a Drupal Registration in Civi Registration forms.

[conductorchris]

I have the same question.

What I'd like is for users to register (in the manner of the excellent "Community Builder" extension, with lots of extra fields). and then check off that they want to receive newsletters and action alerts.  Then all that info would make it's way into civiCRM.

Ideally, there would be modules, so I could put a "register to receive free newsletters and action alerts" with a form to input name, zip code and e-mail address right on the front page.  That would open up a longer registration or user profile page.

I'm trying to work out how to come as close as possible to that vision.  It could mean not using civiCRM

[conductorchris]

I've been exploring solutions here, and so far the best I can come up with is:
1) using Joomla (or Community Builder) for registrations to the site and civiCRM for address and newsletter preference data. 
or
2) using Community builder for log-in and collecting all data with Community Builder and then exporting it (as a csv file) into civiCRM every time I want to send a newsletter. 

Neither of these is acceptable.  Users need a one step registration that includes the data that goes into civiCRM.  Setting up a process that involves exporting a CSV file is extra work for me, but fine - but it's not fine to leave that for future users of the site who won't be as computer savvy as me.

I wish I had enough coding skills to just do what needs to be done and that is actually integrating civiCRM and Joomla at the level of user data so (like Community Builder) there was just *one* underlying user database.  It's a bit of a heartbreak to be so close, but not there yet.

[Donald Lobo]

This is probably a good time for the joomla community to group together and come up with a component that ties Joomla User Registration and CiviCRM profiles. We have most of the code within CiviCRM and use that when integrating with Drupal.

I suspect looking at the way community builder does it will help you get started and show someone how to model the process. Any volunteers from the joomla community?

I suspect this will be between 20-40 hours work

lobo

[speleo]

While searching for a J1.5 solution to bridge SMF I stumbled upon www.jfusion.org.

JFusion provides universal user integration, by extending the Joomla 1.5 user authentication framework without any corehacks.

Currently in fast track development this looks like it will be able to seamlessly tie a single user login to your favourite board, Community Builder, Menalto Gallery via a single codebase.  As I understand it a JFusion plugin would need to be written but JFusion itself does all the heavy lifting.

Could this be our answer?

[Donald Lobo]

Speleo:

yes that might be the answer. Do you want to download it, play around with it and report back

Note that unlike SMF / phpBB etc, CiviCRM does not maintain its own user db / auth. We piggyback on the host for this functionality. We do maintain the link between a user and a contact

lobo

[speleo]

Took a bit of effort to find the JFusion Developers Guide. It's here http://www.jfusion.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45

After looking at this I'm not entirely sure about it's suitability. As you point out JFusion will use a 3rd party user db to authenticate Joomla users to. They are looking at a two way sync very soon but that doesn't get around the fact that CiviCRM doesn't maintain an authentication db. It does maintain info in uf_match but I'm not sure how that would interact here.

Also, I'm not really a serious coder. Maybe a second opinion?

[Donald Lobo]

thats an old guide. there is a new version coming out sometime in June (june 19) that might have what we need: http://jfusion.org/

I suggest someone looking at it, wait till the new version comes out

lobo

[Donald Lobo]

This has come up a few times in the past, and nothing has really happened. So i decided to look out some code and figure out whats needed to be done etc. More details in this blog post


Anyway, I've filed an issue here and have gotten it to a pretty nice working state. You can check the svn commits for this. Note that this is on trunk and uses Joomla 1.5.3.

You will need to patch com_user with the CiviCRM changes which i've also checked in

lobo

[speleo]

Awesome enhancement Lobo! Thank you!

A couple of points. I think it would be better to repackage com_user as a replacement rather than a core hack. I'll look into what is required to do this. Should just be a question of installing a com_civiuser module and unpublishing the Joomla one.

Secondly, what would it take to be able to check if a user loging in has a paid up membership and redirecting them to a civicontribute form if they don't. (or redirect to civicontribute if they are lapsed but redirect elsewhere otherwise).

Henry

[Donald Lobo]

yes, i do agree that at some stage, we'll package it as a component. This is more a proof of concept / developer release item. The changes from com_user are quite minimal, so i'd probably wait till we have a more complete solution.

After looking at com_user code, your requirement is quite doable by modifying com_user. You might want to hire a developer to do the needful for you. I dont think it should be too hard. Web Access (from http://civicrm.org/professional/) should be able to help you out with it

lobo

[vqcdesigns]

Is this modification for Joomla 1.5.2 and CiviCRM 2.0.3?  In order to implement this mod, do I need to just replace the current files with the ones posted?

trunk/CRM/Contact/Form/Edit.php 
trunk/CRM/Contact/Form/Individual.php
trunk/CRM/Core/BAO/CustomGroup.php
trunk/CRM/Core/Invoke.php
trunk/CRM/Dedupe/Finder.php
trunk/CRM/Utils/Array.php
trunk/CRM/Utils/Rule.php
trunk/joomla/com_user/controller.php
trunk/joomla/com_user/views/user/tmpl/form.php

[Donald Lobo]

no this patch is for 2.1

2.0 does not support Joomla 1.5, and i have no idea of what may/may not happen if this patch is applied to C 2.0 / J 1.5.x

lobo

[vqcdesigns]

I did not know that 2.1 is available for download yet.  I did not see it on the site or at SourceForge.