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Joomla 3.4.x and Mootools

joomlaWe have long been aware that the use of Mootools in Joomla extensions is being discouraged, but also know that it is used in a number of different places in the core code and would be automatically loaded if required.

What we were not expecting was that relatively new extensions would be using it.  We have just spent the best part of a week playing with a particular problem involving Mootools that we thought we would share.  We tended to make things more difficult for ourselves as we were using a plugin to automatically disable Mootools (for a much older problem), which tended to ‘mask’ possible solutions which meant we would have reached a conclusion much earlier if we had remembered.

We were working on an update to a front end form and observed that calendar fields were not displaying the ‘popup’ calendar picker window, also that when displaying the ‘tags’ field to enable the user to select or create new tags to add to an item, that the displayed field did not match what we were expecting, or seeing in the back end of the sight using the same code constructs.   We could see a Javascript error in the error console that was either a) Tips not found, or b) Squeezebox not found.  The first coming from a form field tool tip, and the second coming from the form calendar field.  These were obviously related to the form elements, but the tag display didn’t appear to have either of these used in its construction.

The tag display with Mootools disabled looks as follows:

20151221154101 image 4

We tried adding in explicit call to load various Mootools elements yet were not seeing any change in the problems.  After much thought and investigation it was then that we realised that we had the Mootools disabler plugin enabled so all our changes were effectively being ‘ignored’.  After a little silent ‘blue’ language we disabled the plugin and the Javascript errors disappeared and the calendar popup was visible again. 

What we had not expected was that the Tag display would also correct itself, which effectively meant that the Joomla tags helper must be using Mootools somewhere in its code. 

The desired tag display form field required (and achieved):

image

Despite searching we couldn’t find any reference that documented this, so its one to watch out for if you meet it yourselves.

Joomla 3.4.8 released
Rialto v1.2.0 released
 
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