Joomla! extensions

Joomla! 1.6 has a different way of managing users than Joomla! 1.5,which I will try to explain in the following article. The database structure has changed and this change makes that by simply exporting user tables from Joomla! 1.5 and import them in Joomla! 1.6 impossible.

In Joomla! 1.6 we still have 4 tables, but these tables have a different functionality and other names.
Let's compare the tables from the two versions:

- "_core_acl_aro_groups" – in Joomla! 1.5 this table stores the user groups (types). When creating a new Joomla user you would have to know the user's type, take that type id from this table and put it in the "_users" table for the user created in the "gid" field.
This table was replaced by the one called "_usergroups" in Joomla! 1.6, which has the same functionality along with some new user types. Other Joomla user types were eliminated.

- "_users" – in Joomla! 1.5 this table stores all the Joomla users info. In Joomla! 1.6 the table remains, but the field "gid" is removed (the id of the user type from 1.5).

- "_core_acl_aro" – in Joomla! 1.5 this table makes the connection between the table "_users" and the table mapping users "_core_acl_groups_aro_map". The "value" field from "_core_acl_aro" represents the id of the record from the "_users" table and the "id" field helps mapping users into "_core_acl_groups_aro_map" (so users can login to the system).
In Joomla! 1.6 this table has been removed, which led to a total change of the tables structure, the mapping of the records being made into "_user_usergroup_map". While in Joomla! 1.5 the id value from "_core_acl_aro" was important to "_core_acl_groups_aro_map", in Joomla! 1.6 the important values for the mapping table "_user_usergroup_map" are "id" fields from "_users" and "_usergroups".

- "_core_acl_groups_aro_map" – in Joomla! 1.5 this table made the mapping of users so that they could login to the system. While in Joomla! 1.5 one of the most important values (the one from the field "aro_id") was represented by the "id" field from the table "_core_acl_aro_groups" (as discussed above), in Joomla! 1.6 the table which does the user mapping is called "_user_usergroup_map" and its fields are the ids of the records from the tables "_usergroups" (value from field "user_id") and "_user_usergroup_map"(value from field "group_id").

- a new table from Joomla! 1.6 is "_user_profiles", which stores some info on users.

Below you can see the diagram of the tables for both Joomla! 1.5 and Joomla! 1.6 and their connections:

Joomla! 1.5

Joomla! 1.6

The component that makes the migrating of the users from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 1.6 is ARRA User Export Import .

Using this Joomla component you can make a user export from the Joomla! 1.5 database as a .txt or a .csv and then use the file to make the import into Joomla! 1.6. You will have to use the 1.5 version of the component for Joomla! 1.5 and the 1.6 version (under development) for the Joomla! 1.6 website.

The required fields for a successful import into Joomla! 1.6 for the .txt and .csv files are name, username, email. These fields are enough for importing safely a username, the rest of the fields being automatically generated by the component or by the settings chosen by the administrator from the backend.

When exporting, you can choose other fields (except the required ones) as well, based on your preferences: password, user type, blocked, register date, last visit date, activation.

What happens when some fields are missing from the import file (fields which are not required)?
The application gives the user the possibility to create a user without having to know all its details.
For example:
- if the field "password" is missing, the Joomla! administrator has two possibilities:

1) He can fill out the option "Insert default password if none set" from the component settings and this password will be assigned to all users without a known password;
2) The administrator doesn't do anything; the system will take care of automatically assigning a random password to each user;
In both cases the password is encrypted and then inserted into the Joomla database. If the admin decides that new users should get an email with information about their account, he just checks a send mail option.

- if the "user type" field is missing, the system will assign a default value based on what the admin chose for the "Insert default usertype if none set" option. The admin can choose a standard Joomla! user type (existing one) or he can insert a new type. When inserting a new user type, the system will take care of creating it into the database.

- if the "blocked" field is missing, the default value inserted into the database will be '0' (this means that the user is not blocked);

- if the "register date" field is missing, the current date will be inserted into the database;

- if the "last visit date" field is missing, the value "00-00-00 00:00:00" will be stored into the database, meaning the user has never logged in;

- if the "activation" field is missing, no value will stored in the database for that field.

9.99 $