Zend: Zend Studio 5.5. & Zend Platform Beta 3 Released
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As seen on the Zend Developer Zone, Zend has released the latest versions of two of their products - the Zend Platform Beta 3.0 Beta and Zend Studio 5.5.   Updates to the Zend Platform include support for PHP 5.2, some installation improvements, session clustering enhancements, job queues, several performance enhancements, web service functionality, and much more. Check out the Zend website for complete information.   And the Zend Studio enhancements:   Zend Studio 5.5 is the only IDE available for professional PHP developers, encompassing all the development components necessary for the full PHP application lifecycle. Through a comprehensive set of editing, debugging, analysis, optimization and database tools, Zend Studio improves the quality of applications, speeds development cycles and simplifies complex projects.   Check out the full press release for the full scoop on the update.
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Padraic Brady has posted some of his comments on the newly included Zend_Layout and Zend_View_Enhanced components for the Zend_Framework:    These two (now much more polished!) components were both designed to solve the concerns a lot of developers were having in achieving truly complex, structured and modular Views using Zend_View.    Indeed there are months of blog postings, debates, experimental and not-so-experimental code, proposals, IRC sessions and countless emails pouring over how to accomplish the goals of these components. The end result is something I feel will serve Zend Framework users faithfully for months and years to come.    He thanks the developers (Matthew and Ralph) and notes that the inclusion of these two components is one of the largest advancements of the display layer for the Framework in a while.
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The Zend Developer Zone (and Zend) are running a new contest where you could win yourself a free copy of their popular Zend Studio IDE.   It's a very poorly kept secret that Zend is working on the next generation of Zend Studio. They must be getting down to the 'fit and finish' pieces of the project because my buddy Yossi wrote me and asked me to enlist the help of the PHP community at large. So here's his request. The Zend Studio team needs your help. They are looking for a code snippet to showcase the syntax highlighting and debugging capabilities of Zend Studio.    They're looking for certain types of code snippets and a list of the criteria are included in the ZDZ post. The deadline's at at midnight (Pacific) on July the 26th, so get those snippets together and get them sent off for your chance to win!
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Chris Hartjes has posted an update on the Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler package for the Zend Framework, including writing the unit tests to ensure it's complete functionality.   In my spare time I've been banging away at writing the required unit tests for the Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler component that Derek and I had started. I finished all the unit tests for the user based functions, which is a nice milestone. Then I decided to go back and actually read the comments made from the proposal. Oops. I discovered there were a bunch of changes that the folks at Zend said needed to be made in order to accept them. I agree with most of them.   He also lists some of these comments/changes/suggestions for the package that were given to help it fit in better with the rest of the framework.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted an announcement about a new book from php|architect (authored by DevZone's own Cal Evans) - Guide to Programming with the Zend Framework.   This is a project I've been interested in since it's very beginning, mainly because I'm the author of this particular tome. [...] The php|architect web site was a bit more helpful giving a breakdown of the contents of the book and a useful quote.   The book covers topics on the framework like the parts of MVC, web services, authorization, exceptions and even some tutorials to help you get started (including a look at the brand new Zend_Layout class).
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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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Alexander Netkachev has points to an announcement about the latest code freeze for the Zend Framework preceding the release of the 0.9 version of the framework by Bill Karwin.   In a couple of days, the Zend Framework project reaches the most important milestone in its development.  On Thursday March 15, 9:00pm PDT, we will declare a code-freeze for the first Beta Release of Zend Framework.  After a day or so of integration testing, we will release Zend Framework 0.9.0 Beta.    The main difference between this release and some of the previous is that, with the release of this new beta version, the Zend Framework is (functionally) ready to be declared a stable 1.0 status. The stable release is currently scheduled to be released at the end of March 2007.
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As mentioned both here on the symfony project's website and here on the Zend Developer Zone, a new beta release of the framework has been made - version 1.0 Beta 1.   It's been a long time since the latest beta release (0.7.1915), and even a longer time since the last stable release (0.6.3). Today, we are happy to announce the release of symfony 1.0 Beta 1, and this is a major step towards the version 1.0, which should come shortly.   New features in this release include:  Easier installation and larger compatibility Major performance improvement New unit test library Easier templating Better and more flexible Model layer  Check out these and all of the great features of this popular framework over on their website and grab this latest download from their download page.
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A release announcement concerning the latest version of the Zend Core has been posted over on the Zend Developer Zone today:   Zend Technologies, the PHP company, today announced a new version of Zend Core. Zend Core 2.0 is based on PHP 5.2.1 and complements PHP with enhancements to improve development, deepen database support, enhance Windows integration and provide enterprise-class support. Zend Core is available for free and can be downloaded at www.zend.com/core.   Updates in this latest version including better Windows performance/reliability, Zend Enabler, the inclusion of the Zend Framework, MySQL 5.0 and bundled drivers for databases from IBM, Oracle, and MySQL. There's even Mac OS X support built right in.   It's free and simpel to set up, so head on over and give it a try...
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Zend has pointer to a new article today from the Oracle Technology Network - PHP 5, Oracle, and the Future.
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With the date for the Zend/PHP Conference & Expo (October 8-11th, San Francisco) conference growing closer all the time, the more updates the better. The Zend Developer Zone has such an update with more details about the keynote talks, sessions, the "after hours" events and more.   Ok, it's been a few days since I've given a ZendCon update so let's burn a few bytes and talk about what is being planned.   The updates concerning the keynotes are the topics the two speakers will be presenting - Cory Doctorow on "copy machines" and Joel Spolsky with his "Great Software" talk. The sessions for the conference are still mostly the same, but the "after hours" activities have exploded.   Things on the list include a ZCE party on Monday, Happy Hour 2.0 on Tuesday and on Wednesday an all-out karaoke party poolside at the hotel.   There's still plenty of time to register for the event and to get more details on the conference and the whens and wheres, check out the main conference site.
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According to this quick post on the Zend Developer Zone today, the Zend Framework project has a new leader to take the place of Jayson Maynard when he left.    After a difficult search, we have found the seasoned veteran we need to track, manage, and coordinate our ever growing group of contributors and Zend liaisons, and our lengthy list of components and sub-projects on our published roadmap for ZF 1.0, and beyond.   Fortunately, we were introduced to Bill Karwin. Bill is up to this challenge, having performed similar project organization duties at several companies, including Borland and Lutris Technologies. He is also committed to the open-source community, and is a member of the MySQL Guild.    Cal has some other nice things to say about Bill, including a compliment on Bill's grasp on the Zend Framework project.
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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 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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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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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.
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Zend has a new tutorial posted in their PHP 101 series - PHP 101 (part 9): SQLite My Fire!