Question

I am building a Joomla module which will eventually pull data from an external data source. Right now while I learn, I set it to simply print the string “This bit works correctly” to the module position. However, I have been having problems getting it to work correctly. Here is my code:

mod_ucr.php:

<?php
/**
* UniversalContentRepository Module Entry Point
* 
* @package    UniversalContentRepository
* @subpackage Modules
*/

// no direct access
defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );

// Include the syndicate functions only once
require_once( dirname(__FILE__).DS.'helper.php' );
$helper = new modUCRHelper();
$content = $helper->getSnippetContent();
require( JModuleHelper::getLayoutPath( 'mod_ucr' ) );
?>

mod_ucr.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<install type="module" version="1.5.0">
    <name>Universal Content Repository</name>
    <author>Brendon Dugan</author>
    <version>1.5.0</version>
    <description>A module to allow the insertion of UCR Snippets into a Joomla site.</description>
    <files>
        <filename>mod_ucr.xml</filename>
        <filename module="mod_ucr">mod_ucr.php</filename>
        <filename>index.html</filename>
        <filename>helper.php</filename>
        <filename>tmpl/default.php</filename>
        <filename>tmpl/index.html</filename>
    </files>
    <params>
    </params>
</install>

helper.php:

<?php
class modUCRHelper
{
    function __construct(){

    }


    public function getSnippetContent($id = 0){
        $content = "This bit works correctly, ID = $id";
        return $content;
    }
}
?>

tmpl/default.php:

<?php // no direct access
defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );
echo $content; 
?>

Here we set the variable $content to be the output of the getSnippetContent() method of the helper class. This method is currently:

function getSnippetContent($id = 0){
    $output = "This bit works correctly";
    return $output;
}

Which simply outputs the string I want to print. In my template, I should be able to echo content like this:

<?php // no direct access
defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );
echo $content; 
?>

But what the module outputs instead is

"This bit works correctlyThis bit works correctly"

If I comment out the echo statement, the string is still echoed once, suggesting that the return statement itself is echoing.

I adapted my code from the “Hello World!” example located in the Joomla documentation. Any Ideas?

Answer 1

This is Core joomla code for displaying module

$content = '';
ob_start();
require $path;
$module->content = ob_get_contents().$content;
ob_end_clean();

It uses the $content variable itself. And your module is changing the value of $content. One output is from your module and another is due to this joomla code. It appends the content of your module to $content variable (which has been changed in your module).

So do not use $content variable in you code.