Netshine Review:

I cannot praise this book enough! If you develop extensions for Joomla 1.5, whether for distribution or for your own use, this book is a life-saver. As the title suggests, it is in the style of a 'cookbook' - short 'recipes' provide quick and easily digested examples of how to achieve almost any task you can think of using the Joomla API.

The recipes are thematically organised into chapters, and each one is broken down into sections (Getting Ready, How to do it..., How it works..., See also) which provide a short, pithy explanation followed by a code example. Some recipes are accompanied by charts or tables that illustrate or clarify the function.

Whilst most of the recipes are quite short and simple, the book does not shy away from providing more detailed explanation when necessary - for example when dealing with database interaction and writing secure code.

You could read through the whole thing from beginning to end and gain a great insight into how to write Joomla extensions, but this book really comes into its own as a reference work for dipping into when you can't quite remember how to achieve something or what syntax to use.

Highly recommended!