ImageDirectoryField

ImageDirectoryField extends Joomla's built-in FolderlistField to produce a dropdown list of directories rooted at the Joomla images/ folder. The root images entry is always present as the first option. All subdirectory paths are prefixed with images/ so the stored value is always a site-relative path ready for use in media operations.

Class Details

Property	Value
Class	ImageDirectoryField
Namespace	J2Commerce\Component\J2commerce\Administrator\Field
File	administrator/components/com_j2commerce/src/Field/ImageDirectoryField.php
Extends	Joomla\CMS\Form\Field\FolderlistField
Field type string	ImageDirectory

Behavior

getOptions() calls the parent FolderlistField with the following fixed settings:

Property	Value
directory	images (Joomla root /images folder)
recursive	true
hideNone	true

The parent returns all subdirectories. ImageDirectoryField then:

1. Prepends a synthetic images → images option for the root folder.
2. Iterates parent options, skips any with value '' or '-1', and prefixes both value and text with images/.

The result is a flat list like:

images
images/products
images/products/thumbnails
images/categories

XML Usage

<form addfieldprefix="J2Commerce\Component\J2commerce\Administrator\Field">
    <fieldset name="basic">
        <field
            name="upload_directory"
            type="ImageDirectory"
            label="COM_J2COMMERCE_FIELD_UPLOAD_DIRECTORY"
            description="COM_J2COMMERCE_FIELD_UPLOAD_DIRECTORY_DESC"
            default="images"
        />
    </fieldset>
</form>

XML Attributes

Attribute	Required	Default	Description
name	Yes	—	Field name. Stored value is a images/... path string.
type	Yes	—	Must be ImageDirectory.
label	Yes	—	Language key for the field label.
description	No	—	Language key for the tooltip.
default	No	''	Default selected path. Use images to pre-select the root.
class	No	—	CSS class for the <select> element.

Attributes inherited from FolderlistField such as filter, exclude, and stripext are accepted but the directory and recursive properties are overridden internally and cannot be changed via XML.

Stored Value Format

The stored value is always a full relative path from the Joomla site root:

images/products/thumbnails

This value can be used directly with JPATH_SITE . '/' . $value or Uri::root() . $value in PHP.

Usage Notes

• The field is read-only in terms of directory creation — it lists existing directories only. Pair it with MultiImageUploaderField (which creates directories on upload) so the admin can select the correct target folder.
• hideNone is hardcoded to true — there is no blank/empty option in the dropdown.
• Directories whose Joomla FolderlistField values are '' or '-1' are filtered out to avoid placeholder entries that parent field implementations sometimes inject.

Related

• MultiImageUploaderField — Multi-image uploader that targets a selected directory