Content Before Save for Joomla

Fires just before Joomla writes the content model (onContentBeforeSave). Use it to validate, enrich, or block a save from a visual flow rather than a system plugin.

Plugins can validate or modify the table object; returning false can veto the save.

Each run also includes who was logged in at the time and what kind of item was involved — see audit_user and audit_type in Payload Fields below.

This trigger is active when Platform Events are turned on in Joomla (System → JOrchestrator) and matching flows are set to Active.

When this trigger fires, JOrchestrator starts the flow and passes the incoming event or request data to the next connected step. Configure filtering, payload shape, and security on the Design tab.

Content Before Save is a trigger in the Joomla Events › Content Events group. Triggers start a flow. They listen for an external signal — a CMS event, inbound HTTP call, payment notification, or schedule — and pass the incoming data to the first downstream step.

Typical reasons teams add Content Before Save to a flow:

• Validate article fields before Joomla persists them
• Enrich SEO or tags from an AI or API step, then let the save continue
• Stop a publish when a required field is empty — without custom PHP

Before a row is written to the database for any component using the content model events (articles, contacts, tags, etc.).

Common patterns on the canvas:

1. Content Before Save → Send Notification (admin alert)
2. Content Before Save → Insert Row (audit log)
3. Content Before Save → If → Send Email / Update Article

General → Joomla context filter — com_content.article for article saves only (each trigger node has its own filter).

The designer shows these tabs for this node:

After this step runs, later nodes can reference these fields using placeholders such as {{content_before_save.context}}.

Other steps in the same area of the palette:

• Content After Delete (event-onContentAfterDelete) — Joomla Events › Content Events
• Content After Display (event-onContentAfterDisplay) — Joomla Events › Content Events
• Content After Save (event-onContentAfterSave) — Joomla Events › Content Events
• Content After Title (event-onContentAfterTitle) — Joomla Events › Content Events
• Content Before Change State (event-onContentBeforeChangeState) — Joomla Events › Content Events