To gather the total number of articles or posts from a Joomla site externally

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To gather the total number of articles or posts from a Joomla site externally, you typically need to access the Joomla database directly or leverage any available APIs. Here are some methods you can try:

1. Using Joomla’s JSON API (Joomla 4 and Later)

Joomla 4 includes a built-in API that allows external applications to interact with Joomla content, including retrieving articles. You can use this API to count the articles.

  • Endpoint: To retrieve a list of articles, you can use the following endpoint:bashCopy codehttps://your-joomla-site.com/api/index.php/v1/content/articles
  • Authentication: You may need to authenticate with an API token or user credentials, depending on the site’s configuration.
  • Counting Articles: By accessing the content/articles endpoint, you’ll receive a JSON response with the list of articles. You can parse this response to count the articles. Example code in Python
import requests

url = "https://your-joomla-site.com/api/index.php/v1/content/articles"
headers = {"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN"}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers)

if response.status_code == 200:
    articles = response.json().get('data', [])
    print("Total number of articles:", len(articles))
else:
    print("Failed to retrieve articles:", response.status_code)

2. Using RSS Feeds

Most Joomla sites have an RSS feed that displays recent articles. This won’t give you the total count but will allow you to retrieve a limited set of the most recent articles without authentication.

  • Endpoint: You can try accessing the Joomla site’s RSS feed, usually at: https://your-joomla-site.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=featured&format=feed
  • Parsing RSS: Use an RSS parser to count the number of entries in the feed. This is helpful if you only need to track recent articles.

3. Web Scraping (if allowed)

If no API or RSS feed is available, you could consider web scraping. However, this should only be done with permission from the site owner, as it may violate terms of service.

  • Use a tool like BeautifulSoup in Python to parse the HTML of a Joomla page that lists articles.
  • Count the articles on paginated lists and combine the totals.

4. Using a Custom Plugin on the Joomla Site

If you have admin access or can work with the site owner, creating a custom Joomla plugin or module is an efficient way to expose the article count via a simple API endpoint. Here’s a general outline:

  • Create a custom plugin or module that queries the Joomla database to count the articles
use Joomla\CMS\Factory;

// Sample function to get the total article count
function getArticleCount() {
    $db = Factory::getDbo();
    $query = $db->getQuery(true)
                ->select('COUNT(*)')
                ->from($db->quoteName('#__content'));
    $db->setQuery($query);
    return $db->loadResult();
}

echo json_encode(['total_articles' => getArticleCount()]);
  • Output the count: Once the module or plugin is active, it can be accessed via a unique endpoint on the site, which you can then call externally to get the article count in JSON format.

These methods should help you retrieve article counts externally.