Alexander Netkachev's Blog: How to use Zend Framework Controller/Action approach?
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Continuing on from an earlier discussion about the Zend Framework and form submission and handling, Alexander Netkachev has come back to talk a bit more about the Controller/Action approach.   I have a few discussions here about the question I opened a couple of days ago:  how the standard form processing is related to the Controller/Action idea and how developers that are creating sites with the standard Folder/Page approach can use Zend Framework's Controller/Action approach.   What came out of the discussions were three points - use the Controller/Action model to your advantage, use your own forms but use RewriteRouter to make them work, or use the Folder/Page mentality instead.
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Davey Shafik has posted another update on his web services component he's working up for the Zend Framework, the Zend_Service_Server.    I have been working closely with Matthew Weier O'Phinney for the last week on bringing my Zend_Service_Server proposal to fruition.   There have been several changes, but the core has not moved too far. Matthew, Andi and I have decided that we will first implement the different server/client libraries.    He lists the libraries they'll need to tackle first and talks about an "exercise" he did to work up a JSON server component that works in a similar fashion.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest episode of their PHP Abstract podcast series - an interview with Sean Coates (of php|architect).   Today we are going to do something a little different. I was privileged to attend php|works in Atlanta. While there, between tasks, Sean Coats agreed to sit down with me and talk for a bit. Given his level of participation in php|works I was grateful for any time he was able to spare. Come listen as we talk about his work at php|architect, work on the PHP manual and programming in general. This is the first of a couple of interviews I was able to do at php|works.   As usual, you can grab just the mp3 directly, or you can subscribe to their feed and get this and tons more great PHP-related content (including talks on things like PHP and Oracle, attracting talent and looks at several of the popular frameworks like CodeIgniter, Solar and the Zend Framework).
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Not everyone wants to convert their application or create a completely new one just to use the Zend Framework. Some just want to use their existing site and attach the ZF where they want, adding its functionality to the mix. That's what this new article on Alexander Netkachev blog is all about.    If you created the application that uses the Zend_Controller class, as described at the "Zend_Controller / Getting Started" manual page, you may think about how to combine your application with an existing one. For example, with the blog-like application. This is a little bit more complex then just installing it into one of the subfolders of your application.   You need to tune up mod_rewrite and here is an example of doing so. The example shows how I installed the WordPress blog system and modified the .htaccess file correctly to run the installed application.    He walks through the steps of the installation:  downloading WordPress setting up a mod_rewrite rule modifying it to accomidate the installation of the Zend Framework  He also includes a note that, when you add another application, you might need to add another rewrite rule to accomidate it.
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The Zend Developer Zone has released part two of a series (here's part one posted back in November) looking at making forms for your website with the help of the PEAR HTML_QuickForm class.   I'll be discussing some of the package's non-standard form elements, teaching you how to combine elements into groups, showing you how to apply templates to control a form's appearance, and guiding you through the process of writing and registering your own custom validation rules.   There's plenty of sample code and screenshots to go around in this second part including examples of form auto-completion, multi-select elements and and example of its integration with Smarty.
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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.
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P&aacute;draic Brady is back today with the latest installment (part 5!) of his look at complex views in the Zend Framework. This time, her focuses on something called the Two-Step Pattern - a pattern similar to the Layouts pattern.   Part 5 of our series takes a small time-out from approaching a Composite View solution to reusable Views to take a peek at a simpler approach useful for simpler types of web applications. As we've discussed previously Composite Views allow the nesting of reusable View elements, effectively building a View based on a hierarchy of Views. But often there are simpler solutions to simpler problems. One such solution is the Two-Step View pattern, sometimes called Layouts if implemented in a specific way (as we do below!).   He gives the example of a simple website that needs a header and footer on every page. Rather than having to duplicate the header/footer calls across all of the pages, the Layout (Step-Two) pattern defines a single template that contains the header and footer but also uses a "main" area where the content is dynamically inserted.   He includes a full code example to help illustrate the point - a class, Zps_View, that is fed the path to the layouts and the layout files to use before rendering.
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Andries Seutens has created his own quickstart method for working with the Zend Framework and in his latest post, he shares the files.   If you are looking for a quick way to get started with the Zend Framework, then you should download this file. This download has a default setup for the Zend Framework, including: a conventional directory structure, a bootstrap file, configuration file with 2 stages: production, staging, an error controller, an index controller and more.   For course, you'll have to have the framework installed to get things up and running, but outside of that you'll only need to put the downloaded files above into the right place.
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Continuing on from his preamble on the integration of the PHPSpec BDD tool into the Zend Framework, Padraic Brady has posted the next in the series - a look at what it would take to make the integration happen.   The ideal was to move away from line-by-line setup and manipulation of Zend instances towards a more simplified model which is standardised for any PHPSpec specs.   He's already created an "experimental branch" to work inside of and some of these updates have been made to the trunk for the release of PHPSpec 0.3.0. The key that he found was in getting the customization of the "Zend Context operational to set up elements of the FrontController". He also includes a simple example of the extended functionality in action - simple interface methods to work with Twitter.
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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 Zend Developer Zone has posted a new tutorial from Alexander Veremyev as an introduction to the Zend_Pdf component for the Zend Framework.   The Zend_Pdf component of the Zend Framework is intended to allow you to create or manipulate PDF documents from within your applications. [...] In this tutorial my goal is to give you an overview of the capabilities of Zend_Pdf.   Alexander shows the process from start to finish - loading the module, creating a new document, working with text, creating images and shapes, styling, rotation and cropping.
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While the Zend Framework works out how it's going to integrate complex views, Paul Jones posts about how the Solar framework makes it simple to work with views and layouts.   He breaks up the post into different sections for the kinds of view/layout and controller combination:   Page Controller, View, and Layout Variable Assignment Other Layouts, or No Layout Multiple Formats Shared Layouts   The code in the post makes it simple to add an overall template for the site instead of having to add a header and footer to each view (or where the include doesn't belong).
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Matthew O'Phinney points out that one of the latest Zend Webinar presentations, "MVC applications with the Zend Framework", has been posted to Zend's webinar page.   We had more than 50 attendees, most of whom stayed on the whole time. For those of you who attended, thanks for the great questions and comments. If you would like to view the webinar, download the slides, or download the example code (a hello world app), visit the Zend.com Webinar page and look for the presentation.   Other webinars posted include a look at the Zend Core, an overview of the Zend Development Tools and a look at the Zend Framework and Access Control.
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Here's what was popular in the PHP community one year ago today:Community News: PHP 5.2.1 ReleasedZend Developer Zone: Zend_Acl / Zend_Auth example scenarioJSLabs Blog:  5 tips for creating high performance web appsRob Allen's Blog: Modules (Zend Framework)Alexander Netkachev's Blog: How to use Zend Framework Controller/Action approach?DevShed: Using Abstract Factory Classes in PHP 5 to Work with Online FormsWebCheatSheet.com: Two New Tutorials - Database Export & Sending EmailIlia Alshanetsky's Blog: Month of PHP BugsWindows Skills Blog: Using SQLite as a database backend for a lightweight serverCommunity News: DreamStats "rootpath" File Inclusion Vulnerability IdentifiedPHP.net: PHP Manual UpdatesCommunity News: MySQL native driver for PHP - mysqlndAlexander Netkachev's Blog: Controller/Action versus Folder/PageSymfony Project: Online doc interface improvedFelix Geisendorfer's Blog: Making error handling for Model::save more beautiful in CakePHP
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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).
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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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One of the most asked questions when it comes to using the Zend Framework is "how can I use it in a subfolder?" Everything behaves well when it's at the document root of the server it's on, but strange things start happening when it's anywhere below that. There's been server people that have posted solutions, and another can be added to them - this new post from Alexander Netkachev.    This question I had heard many times and now I have a few minutes to write down the answer so that everybody who stuck in the similar trouble could quickly resolve the issue. Who works with Zend Framework, most likely, have read the "Zend_Controller / Getting Started" Zend Framework manual article, which explains how to use Zend_Controller in the root folder of the web server. But it does not answer on the "How to run my Zend Framework application in a subfolder of the web server document folder?" question and I propose you my solutions.    First is rather a hack then a recommended solution, but with it you can start the applications and examples that use standard router. The second is neater but it depends on the Zend_Controller_RewriteRouter class.    The first method makes some changes to the default routing code itself (the hack) to make it no longer just use the REQUEST_URI, but to look at more of the URL to see if subdirectories exist. OF course, the more preferred way to go, and just as simple of an option, is using the framework itself to change the RewriteRouter options to allow for the subdirectory.