Zend Developer Zone: Zend Framework, JSON, and Del.icio.us
237087
In a new tutorial from jJason Whittenburg today on the Zend Developer Zone, he demonstrates how to use the Zend Framework and a little JSON to get your application talking to Del.icio.us.    Del.icio.us is a social linking site to store web links. Some one afternoon while messing around Zend Framework I had the idea that it might be nice to add my Del.icio.us links to my homepage. This sounds easy enough as Del.icio.us makes available an RSS feed for this purpose. However, there is one problem; Zend_Feed does not seem to be able to parse this particular RSS feed.    The reason is that Del.icio.us makes use of some extended namespaces for its RSS feed. Normally this would not be a problem as we could simply write a new class to extend Zend_Feed to read this file. However, this is a quicker and simpler way. Enter JSON.    Since there's no direct JSON support in the Zend_Feed component, they have to load up the Zend_Json component to help out. He shows how to create both the controller and the view for the setup as well as a database to help cache the data from each request.
77294
Cal Evans has posted his final wrapup from this year's php|works conference up in Toronto on the Zend Developer Zone today.   This last look at the conference includes mentions of:  Joe Stagner's keynote talk,  Cal presenting his talk - "Debugging PHP without cursing...mostly" Wez Furlong's PDO talk Derick Rethans' and his "Ranting Hour" The panel discussion on the Zend PHP 5 Certification PHPers winning at trivia Accordian cover solos John Coggeshall's "Apps Made Easy on Zend Framework" talk    Check out the full post for the rest of the story (especially the accordion music selections!)
768564
According to the Zend Developer Zone, the Zend Framework is going to the even more powerful in the future with the inclusion of command line functionality.   So, without further adieu, it is my pleasure to announce that Zend Framework 1.5 will include a robust, powerful, and- yes- 15-minute-demo-enabled command line interface for code generation!   They've set up a default structure (that's "recommended") but doesn't have to be strictly adhered to. They know how most developers have structured their applications and made it accordingly. There's three proposals in the group - the Zend_Console, Zend_Build component and the Zend_Build for Core.
416901
Aaron Wormus has a new note on his blog today about his presentation at this year's Zend/PHP Conference & Expo and another speaker he's excited to hear.    One of the Zend conference sessions that I'm pretty excited about is Don Samisa Abeysinghe's (of WSO2) "Fully Fletched Web Services with PHP".   I'll be presenting a session on "Moving to PHP5 with Style." This tutorial/case study will be based on experience in transitioning several codebases from PHP4 to PHP5, creating unit tests & started a move towards a service based architecture without a complete platform rewrite.    Aaron's talk fits under the banner of the "PHP Development" talks, including others on topics like hosting PHP applications on Windows, working with PDO, unicoding in PHP6, and using PHPUnit.
14983
Developer.com has a new tutorial posted today dealing with a specific use of one of the more popular PHP frameworks currently, the Zend Framework, and using it to create multi-lingual websites from Jason Gilmore.   Despite my best attempts I'm unable to speak this array of languages, but as a Web developer I wanted to create the most efficient means for hosting a multi-lingual support site, and then work with native speakers to translate the English material. Because the support site runs the Zend Framework, naturally I wondered whether some sort of translation component was available, and sure enough a quick perusal of the Zend Framework website turned up Zend_Translate. In this brief tutorial I'll document how I'm using the Zend Framework to make my website available to the world.   Jason breaks up the article into two main sections - an introduction to using the Zend_Translate component and examples of it in action (including the creation of CSV files to trade out the translations.
758558
On the Zend Developer Zone today, Cal Evans has posted his look at the Phrasebook series from Sams Publishing covering Javascript, MySQL, Apache, and, of course, PHP.   I get a lot of books to review. Currently the stack is about waist high and UPS hasn't been here this morning. So in an effort to trim down that stack of books, I'm going to talk about books 4 in one review.   He looks briefly at the contents for each of the books, pointing out specific areas they seemed particularly helpful in. He doesn't recommend them to someone trying to learn the language right off the mark. These are, as their title implies, just clips and handy snippets of information to help you get to where you're going. You have to know how to get on the road first, though...
198499
The Zend Developer Zone has posted part four of their Ajax Chat Tutorial series (part 1, part 2, part 3) today focusing on enhancing the structure they've already created.   In part 4 of this tutorial we take a look at adding a new MessageAction method to our current Controller. This will expect one piece of information: a new chat message.   Of course, plenty of code is included and they show how to work with JSON messages over XML for simplicity's sake (via an updated IndexController).
483983
On the KillerPHP.com website, there's this new post starting off a new series (by Jonathan Lebensold) talking about the different components of the Zend Framework.   When Stefan asked me to write about the Zend Framework, I decided I would avoid copy-able code, simply because it doesn't re-enforce good software design. [...] The following is a brief summary of 4 components in the Zend Framework: Zend_Loader, Zend_Log, Zend_Config and Zend_Registry.   For each of the four components, he looks at how they can be used (reason why), some good and bad things about them and he includes some pseudocode to show the format for its use.
728813
Matthew O'Phinney has a reminder for anyone in the Burlington, VT area tonight - there's a meeting of the Burlington PHP user group tonight at 5:30pm.   Bradley Holt will be giving a presentation on developing a web application using Zend Framework. Bradley Holt is founder and web developer for Found Line, a local design and development studio which has used Zend Framework in several recent projects.    You can get more information about the meetup from this event page on their Google Groups site (happening at the Brown & Jenkins Coffee Roasters).
432217
The Zend Developer Zone has posted some information about some freelancing work that the International Press Association is looking to have done.   If you've got spare cycles and want to help a brother out, read on. I received this from Leonard Rapoport of the International Press Association, (Disclaimer: Zend is a member of the IPA) The IPA is looking for some help. As you can see from the email below, they need a PHP programmer to help them out on some small projects and know of some larger projects they could turn you on it.   Any interested parties should contact Leonard via email and get things started.
624249
On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new post pointing to the second part of their look at the Manning Publishing book "PHP in Action".   If you've been anxiously awaiting part two of this series then your wait is over. Here's a short introduction to the section part of this series written by the author of the book, Dagfinn Reiersol. I had the privilege of meeting Dagfinn at phpuk last week. Below the introduction is the link I know youâve been waiting for.   The new PDF they link to focus on two different patterns - the Decorator (a wrapper class) pattern and the Null Object (an object that works like the others but does nothing behind the scenes) pattern.
94330
On the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new tutorial covering the use of the Zend_Acl and Zend_Auth modules in the Zend Framework to create a simple user login and authentication system from Simon Mundy.   After submitting the initial example of how Zend_Auth and Zend_Acl could be implemented Gavin pointed out areas that weren't really addressed in my proof of concept and it could potentially confuse newcomers to the way MVC is utilised. I'd like to clarify that post to a) Address those concerns and b) see if there's any constructive criticism of the process that could benefit everyone.   He sets up the site layout (including where the actions lie) and defines some of the access rules the script will follow. From there, he creates a bootstrap file and an index.php to work with it. On top of this, he builds the key piece - the Auth.php - to handle the validation of the users.
78807
Cal Evans came up against a problem earlier in his development work - issues when he was trying to get his old include path.   What you SHOULD get back is a string describing your old include path. If you get false, you have hit the problem I hit last night. I went so far as to recompile 2 difference versions of Apache thinking (almost correctly) that it was something that had changed in my Apache config files.   If you're one of the "falsers" out there, check out the rest of his post of his solution around the problem. His problem stemmed from his trying to reassign a php_admin_value (instead of php_value where the script could override it) setting, specifically the one for the include_path.    He also points out that Zend Framework users might keep an eye out for this problem too as the Zend_Loader package changes the include path at times.
82198
Knut Urdalen shares a note about the latest issue of the International PHP Magazine - the December 2007 issue - that he has an article in.   The December issue of International PHP Magazine includes my latest article "Seamless AJAX with PRADO - An introduction to ActiveControls". In this article I discuss some AJAX design patterns and show you how to make use of them in AJAX enabled components that ships with the PRADO framework.   More information about this issue (and subscribing to the International PHP Magazine) can be found on this page of their site and details on the PRADO framework are over on the project's website.
445133
On the Zend Developer Zone there's a new post from Bill Karwin highlighting the Zend_GData component of the Zend Framework and how it can help grab information from the Google Data APIs.   The recent Zend Framework 1.0.3 release includes new support for some great services, including Picasa Web Albums, YouTube, and Google Documents List.   He talks about the interfaces for each of these (including what you can grab) and includes some pointers to example code that can be used with either the full framework or just the GData bundle. There's also a video demo of the component being used to fetch data from the Data API.
695342
The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest podcast episode in their PHP Abstract series today. The show i shosted by Chris Hartjes again (see his previous show) and discusses the difference between "glue" and "full stack" frameworks.   Today's special guest is Chris Hartjes. Chris has been building PHP applications since 1998. Currently employed as a Senior Developer for the Cake Development Corporation, Chris has been labeled as an "agent provocateur" within the PHP community. [...] Today Chris is going to talk to us today about Glue Frameworks vs. Full Stack frameworks.   The show can be downloaded directly from here or, as always, you can drop the url to their feed into your favorite aggregator and get this and other great episodes of PHP Abstract.
264910
Scott Mattocks, like so many others, has just reciently recieved notification that he's been accepted as a speaker for the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo this fall. He talks more about his speech in his latest post.   My session, "Consusming Web Services with PHP-GTK 2&#8243; will be a look at how to turn a web services API into a desktop application. I only have fifty minutes so it won't be very heavy on implementation details. Instead it will look more at representing different data structures, collecting different types of data and how creating a desktop application can make life easier for the company and the end user.   Scott joins other speakers for this great event, including speakers like Ilia Alshanetsky, Wez Furlong, and Zeev Suraski. Be sure to check back on the Zend site soon to see when Scott and others' talks will be held.