Zend Developer Zone: Zend_Controller_Action, Now With Parameters!
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On the Zend Developer Zone a new post points out feature that the controllers of the Zend Framework has - parameters on the actions.   Basically, Zend_Controller_Action is the parent of all of the controllers in your application. This controller is what C stands for in MVC, a design pattern used lately in web application development, especially in RIA development.   The post includes a tutorial on using the parameters in an example of a design pattern.
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Nick Halstead takes a look at another aspect of the Zend Framework in his latest blog post - the ACL component in the most recent release, Zend Framework RC1.   Yesterday RC1 of Zend Framework was released. I have been working away using it for several months and I have tried to give back small snippets of code as I went along. I had to do some work on my class that extends the Zend ACL and it reminded me how I like to approach coding as a whole.   He goes on to look at what the Zend Framework access control functionality is and how he plans on using it. He follows this with a few code snippets that, among other things, show how the Zend_Config_Ini component could be used to maintain the access list.
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The latest weekly summary for the PHP mailing lists has been posted over on the Zend Developer Zone. This week, discussions included:  Sandboxed semaphores Focus on *printf [continued] PHP 5.2.1 RC2 and PHP 4.4.5 RC1 It's all in the HEAD  Descriptions of each of the headings are provided, including code and a "short version" for those on the run.   Be sure to check back each week for a new summary.
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Rob Allen has posted about a small modification that he made to his Zend Framework setup that allows for a little safer echoing of information out to the View later of an application.   One of my biggest issues with using PHP as the templating engine in View scripts is that the easiest way to echo a variable is the least secure. [...] So, I decided to leverage a post by Mike Naberezny from a while ago about streams. The idea is all his; I just modified it to work with Zend Framework's Zend_View the way I wanted it to.   His method uses a slightly different output format - instead of using a normal echo statement to push out the escaped output, it uses a special syntax using the "@" sign as a shortcut to the call to escape(). He includes the code you'll need to make it work in your ZF install and explain it a bit (including where the real key lies - in stream_popen).
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Padraic Brady has posted today about a subclass of the Zend_Loader package (in the Zend Framework) he had written up to handle Dependency Injections - it was submitted but ended up being replaced with a Zend_Di component instead.   I realised someone had proposed a novel new component called Zend_Di, and that small change was since accepted by Federico into his DI buster. This is a quick overview with very simple use cases - read the full proposal for even more gory details about your object innards using DI.   He talks about what DI (dependency injection) is and what it can be used for and includes a simple example set around a controller in the framework that uses the Zend_Di component to make a "mock Zend_Mail" that can be used in testing too. Examples of these sorts of tests (with PHPSpec) are included too.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted both the Zend Weekly Summaries issues #323 and #324.   In #323, there's talk of OpenSSL integration, a CVS server change, and several PHP security discussions (a suggested read).   Issue #324 talks about runtime JIT proposals, debugging overloaded objects, more on PHP security, the release of PHP 5.2.1 RC3, and more "fine grained" control over allow_url_*   Be sure to keep up with the latest mailing list and community happenings through these great updates from Steph Fox.
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Aaron Wormus is back today on the Zend Developer Zone with another in his "Hidden Gems" series. This time, he takes a look at the "Zend Plumbing", those bits of connective code that help you make your Zend Framework applications work.   The functionality that he covers in this article are some of the min parts that a lot of ZF coders use every day and might not know it:  the Zend class (providing a suite of helper methods) built in Wrapper functions:  loadFile loadClass loadInterface isReadable dump exception  the Zend registry  Each of these is briefly described with some sample code for the loadFile, loadClass, exceptions and the Registry to give you an idea of how to use it all. As always, you can check out the Zend Framework website for all the details on each of these functionality bits.
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Cristian Bichis sent along a message today reminding us about the unofficial Zend Framework forums that's been started over on zfforums.com:   This is the only forum dedicated to the Zend Framework (in English) and several users have already joined with lots of topics started including MVC, Zend_Db, Concepts related to the framework and Ideas about it and its future. So, join up yourself and talk with other Zend Framework developers at zfforums.com.   There's already some decent activity over there - around 120 members with over 350 posts going - not too bad considering they've just started up. Head on over, get yourself signed up and start participating in the discussion to help build these forums into a great resource for Zend Framework developers everywhere.
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The Zend Developer Zone has a new tutorial posted today that talks about the integration of one of the more popular database abstraction/relational mapping tools for PHP5 with the Zend Framework. Specifically, it picks up where this article left off.   One area that the article did not mention was, how does the app know which model will be used? I mean, let's say a client clicks on the link "controller/action", do I have to wait for the front controller to dispatch the request to the controller before knowing that it was called? That is, the model is known explicitly by my app only when I'm in the requested action.   He notes a pretty simple solution to the problem - using the Zend Framework plugin system to create an interface between the application and the model classes that Propel generates.
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P&aacute;draic Brady continues his series on working with Complex Views in the Zend Framework with this new article - part seven focusing on the Zend_View Enhanced method.   It's been a long, and hopefully interesting, road to Part 7. In this concluding entry to the long running, and oft delayed, "Complex Views with the Zend Framework" series I introduce the Zend_View Enhanced Proposal for the Zend Framework, elaborate on its operation, and provide some opinions on the ongoing debate over its implementation.    In this final entry of the series, he recaps previous concepts (like Partials/Layouts/Controllers/Placeholders) and how far reaching the Zend_View Enhanced component is. He also includes some of the helpers and interfaces he's proposed for the module including:   Zend_View_Helper_Partial Zend_View_Helper_Controller Zend_View_Helper_HeadScript Zend_View_Helper_Doctype Zend_View_Helper_HeadStyle   He takes each of the concepts mentioned above and applies these different helpers/interfaces inside them, illustrating with some sample code as needed.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:PHPClasses.org: File upload progress meter for PHP 4, at last!Zend Developer Zone: Zend Framework Preview Release 0.6.0 AnnouncedIBM developerWorks: Generate Flash movies on the fly with PHPMike Bernat's Blog: Creating a Simple Registration Script using PHPphp|architect: An overview of the CakePHP frameworkPHPBuilder.com: Reading RSS feeds in PHP: Part 2The Bakery Blog: SwiftMailer Component TutorialPHP-GTK Community Site: Merry Christmas (A Holiday Widget)Ben Ramsey's Blog: Installing the Eclipse PHP IDEZend Developer Zone: Zend Studio 5.5 WalkthroughCommunity News: Vancouver PHP Conference 2007Edin Kadribasic's Blog: BenchmarksJSLabs Blog:  phpBB 3...is it worth the wait?Christopher Jones' Blog: Installing Oracle XE on Ubuntu with PHPChris Chabot's Blog: phpSocketDaemon
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Well, the official announcement has been made and the Zend Developer Zone has the scoop on the latest release of the Zend Framework - Preview Release 0.6.0.    This represents a watershed for Zend Framework: we have passed the halfway point. We decided to advance the version number more than the customary "one-tenth" increment.   We are at a phase in which we are focused on finishing the components of the product. As we are approaching a state of feature-completeness, a Beta Release, and then the General Release of version 1.0, we have created a more precise roadmap for the scope and schedule of upcoming preview releases of Zend Framework.    Updates in this edition include:  Lucene-compatible search engine query language Improved Session-handling design Improved XmlRpc client and server Emerging components for I18N, Getopt, Mail folders, and others. Solutions for 126 bugs and feature enhancements, recorded in our issue tracker.    You can read up about all this and more on the Zend Framework Wiki home page.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted the fifth and final installment of the series Stefan Priebsch has written up about debugging your application via the XDebug software.   Today, we will have a look at another great feature of xdebug - creating code coverage statistics. Code coverage statistics show how many times each line of the code has been executed. Conversely, they also show which lines of code have not been executed, which is in fact much more interesting.   He talks a bit about what code coverage is and how it can help you fine tune your application. He walks you through the installation of the two packages that will help out with running the reports - phing and PHPUnit. Using these, he shows how to create a simple unit test and a build file for phing that combine and, via the XDebug calls to xdebug_start_code_coverage, xdebug_stop_code_coverage and xdebug_get_code_coverage, are used to generate the output graphs and stats in a nice, easy to read interface.
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Continuing on from the previous part of his series, Stefan Priebsch has posted part two of his look at using XDebug over at the Zend Developer Zone.   Welcome to the second installment of our five-part series of articles on xdebug, the PHP developer's swiss army knife extension. The installation of xdebug and its basic features were covered last week. This week, we will explore the tracing feature of xdebug.   He details what tracing is and how it's helpful (no more repetitive var_dumps!) in finding issues in your code. He shows how to set up a trace log, add the code to your application to pass debugging information off to the log and how to add additional information to the log to make narrowing down the error even easier.
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Matt Wade has posted a quick item to APress' Inside Open Source blog today mentioning an update to an item he'd previously mentioned - issues with the Zend_Cache module.   One of my complaints was the Zend_Cache did not accept lifetimes on a per object basis, but rather the lifetime was at an application level. I just received notice in my inbox that the issue has been fixed! The change is currently in svn, and should be in the 0.80 preview release. Thanks go to Fabien for the fix.   You can download this latest version of the Framework (0.7.0) from the Zend Framework website.
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Rob Allen has made some updates to his Zend Framework tutorials - one becuse of a bug in the code (ID!=id) and others by way of updates:   I've finally updated the source code to my Zend Framework tutorial so that the hidden field in the form is named "id" rather than "ID". A minor error that meant that editing didn't work! This is because in PHP $_POST['id'] is not the same as $_POST['ID']!   His other update was on the Zend_Auth tutorial to change the database variable to make it more consistent. Updated zip files for both are now available.
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Matthew O'Phinney had the chance to present the Zend Framework during a meeting he attended of his local PHP user group (BostonPHP) as a part of a series their doing.   Horde was also represented as part of the evening's fare. It was the first time I've attended a UG, so I got the double whammy of that and being a presenter. Oh, make it a triple whammy -- Boston is a 3+ hour drive from the Burlington, VT area I now call home.   He mentions a talk that Chuck Hagenbuch (of the Horde project) gave on the current state of the project and a bit about his presentation (including some portions that pointed out problems with the Zend_Db component). You can check out this and the rest of the contents of his presentation here [pdf] and here [mp3 podcast].