🔍 What Are Libraries?

Libraries are defined once and injected where needed — allowing centralized management of third-party or custom assets. They allow you to:

• Load JS frameworks (e.g. Chart.js, Select2, UIkit extensions)
• Add custom CSS styling or transitions
• Inject global scripts for modals, tabs, drag/drop, etc.
• Organize local or remote (CDN) assets cleanly

Each Library can include:

• JavaScript (.js) files
• CSS (.css or .scss) files
• External URLs or internal asset paths
• Inline JS/CSS if needed (advanced usage)

🎯 Key Features

• ✅ GUI-defined — no manual code required
• ✅ Assign to Snippets, Layouts, or Templates
• ✅ CDN or local loading supported
• ✅ Ordered loading (priority-based)
• ✅ Minified and bundled on compile (if desired)
• ✅ Compatible with frontend and backend views
• ✅ Scoped per context (admin/site, list/item)

🧠 How It Works in JCB

• Define a Library in the GUI (give it a key and file paths or code)
• Assign the Library to a Snippet, Layout, or Template
• On compile, the asset is injected into the Joomla output correctly:
• Admin: via JToolbarHelper or JDocument
• Site: via JHtml or document head
• You don’t need to write enqueue logic manually

💡 Use Cases

• Load UIkit or Bootstrap extensions (e.g., modals, datepickers)
• Include Chart.js for dynamic graphs
• Add custom animations/stylesheets
• Provide frontend validation scripts
• Apply backend styling overrides

🛠️ Maintenance & Reusability

Libraries are JCB entities, so they can be:

• Reused across views
• Exported/imported
• Forked and versioned
• Updated independently from templates/layouts/snippets

This keeps your asset management centralized and scalable.

🔗 Related Features

• Snippets: inject Libraries with dynamic HTML
• Templates: attach libraries for page-wide functionality
• Layouts: use Libraries for partial enhancements
• Custom Admin Views & Site Views: assign Libraries via rendering context

📘 Conclusion

Libraries in JCB allow clean, modular, and reusable integration of frontend and backend assets — making your components smarter, more interactive, and easier to maintain. Instead of manually managing script inclusion, you define Libraries once and inject them visually across views. This bridges logic and design without compromising structure.