Chris Shiflett's Blog: Preparing for the Zend Cert
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Chris Shiflett has a new posting on his weblog today that might interest anyone out there looking to take (and pass) the Zend PHP Certification Exam.
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Zend has a new tutorial posted in their PHP 101 series - PHP 101 (part 9): SQLite My Fire!
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted about some of their (Zend's) upcoming webcasts/webinars for the next two months:   On a regular basis, Zend hosts free Webinars on a variety of Zend and PHP related topics. They keep a lost of them over at the Zend site but occasionally, I like to list them here to make sure all DevZone readers are aware of them.   The list includes:   Zend Studio Neon Beta Overview (Oct 17) PHP4 to PHP5 Migration (Oct 24) Zend Framework Database Access (Oct 31) Improve your PHP Application's Search Capabilities with Lucene (Nov 7) Building Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with PHP and Zend Framework (Nov 14) PHP Security Basics (Nov 28)   Both the pages for each of the webinars and the Zend Developer Zone post have summaries of what each is about.
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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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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 an interview its editor, Cal Evans got to do with author and podcaster Paul Reinheimer.    Many of you will recognize the name Paul Reinheimer as the primary instructor for php|architect's training classes. Others will recognize him as one of the two hosts of the podcast PRO::PHP Podcast. Still others know him as the author of Professional Web APIs with PHP from Wrox Press.   I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with this young but rising star in the PHP community last year at php|works. Now, after sitting way too long on the shelf, IÃ¢ÂÂve finally had enough time to finish this interview and present it to you.    Cal and Paul talk about things like how he got into programming, why he made the move into PHP, Paul's API experiences and COMET.
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On the Zend Developer Zone, Cal Evans has posted a quick look at one of the new offerings from the Manning Publishing group - "PHP in Action".   My buddy Olivia over at Manning Publications sent us a present recently. They are working on the title PHP in Action and they sent us a chapter to share with you. PHP in Action is scheduled to release in April of this year but it's available now in "Manning Early Release Program", or MEAP. MEAP is a cool program that allows you to buy the book long before it is released and have access to the chapters as they are released. Then, when the final dead-tree edition ships, they will send you one. The great thing is, there is no additional cost for MEAP.   He links to the book's description on the Manning site and gives some credit to the authors, Dagfinn Reiersol with Marcus Baker and Chris Shiflett. And, of course, the link to the sample chapter from the book - a look at Design Patterns.
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In this new post to his blog today, Raphael Stolt shows how to combine the Zend Framework and Phing to create a simple, quick setup utility for future ZF projects.   After spending too much time on directory and view script shifting to align an 'older' Zend Framework application to the very useful ViewRenderer Action Helper of the follow-up releases I crafted a single Phing buildfile to stick to the recommended conventions and to have a nearly 'one-button' setup solution for any upcoming projects.    He'd found some other packages that did something similar, but wanted to do it with Phing. He includes the requirements (the software) features that the buildfile makes easy to include and some future improvements that could be made to the install to make things even easier. The buildfile is included and any path or configuration changes that might need to be made.    Phing is a "make" replacement that uses XML build files to define tasks in classes.
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Cal Evans has made a new post to the Zend Developer Zone gathering together all the slides he could find from the recent Zend/PHP Conference & Expo (2007):   Most of these have already been posted on the speakers blogs. However, I thought it would be a good idea to gang them all together on one post for those who are looking for them. I've also linked to the blog posts of any speakers who blogged about ZendCon as well. Watch this page for updates, as new slides come in, I'll update the page.   If you were a speaker at the conference and you don't see your slides linked, send Cal at note at cal [at] this domain with your info.
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P&aacute;draic Brady, looking ahead to the work he will be doing over the next few months, is proposing on his blog about a new Zend Framework component - Zend_Service_Currency.    I did a quick check on what PHP classes are available for the purpose. There's really not a whole lot out there. There's a PEAR class along the lines I need, but it's released under the PHP License and, not to be too argumentative, I prefer non-PEAR solutions where the end-user may have no access to update PEAR.   So since the project is planned to use the Zend Framework, I shot off a mail to the Framework's fw-general mailing list to see if it would be a worthwhile contribution.    He sees that someone else had already opened a proposal for the same idea and decided to join with that group to work up the module. He also links to his original proposal and gives a brief overview of the goals of the package.
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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.
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In a new post to his blog, Christopher Jones mentions some of the talks that he's going to give at the upcoming Zend/PHP Conference & Expo:   Oracle & PHP users: make sure you check out the Zend Conference.  I'll be given a couple of sessions, "Connection Pooling & Other Features for Data Scaling" and "Performance Tuning for PHP with Oracle Databases".  There are plenty of other great talks, too.   There's tons of other sessions happening during the conference including talks on:   best practices enterprise PHP the Zend Framework API design   Check out the official conference page for information on location, other sessions and registration.
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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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In his latest blog post, Wolfgang Drews is pointing out a training class his other site, DynamicWebPages.de, is doing for the Zend Framework.   Just a short shameless Plug for all who it may concern: Dynamic Web Pages holds a free information webinar about the new php5-certification in german language next week wednesday, 13th of december at 3 p.m.   Christian Wenz with be the facilitator and you can get complete information and sign up on phpzertifizierung.eu.
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Jonathan Snook has posted some of his first impressions of the Zend Framework to his blog today - and so far, they're pretty good:   Last week, the first production release of the Zend Framework was released. I've taken some time to read through the documentation to understand what each of the components do. And you know what? I think I like it.   He talks about what the framework is, how it compares to the CakePHP framework and his example of making a simple del.icio.us class to pull recent posts from a feed.
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On the Zend Developer Zone today, there's this new tutorial that looks at making the move from PHP4's object-oriented programming up to the "more complete obejct model of PHP5" - specifically with the Decorator design pattern.   While working on a project I realized one particular solution was a pretty good way to demonstrate the decorator design pattern together with some of PHP5's features, including abstract classes, interfaces, type hinting, the final keyword and the visibility of properties and methods. This article is intended for those of you who, like myself, are moving from object-oriented programming, including some use of design patterns, in PHP4, to the more complete object model of PHP5.   He sets up a scenario about the development of an online pizza ordering system to show how to "decorate" a pizza with each of the toppings on a list (instead of having to list out every pizza in every possible topping combination). Of course, all of the code is included and explained so you understand exactly what's happening. Finally, there's a demonstration of its usage - a simple call that grabs the stock level/name/cost of each of the items in stock (pizza combinations).
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Nick Halstead has started up another programming competition today - this time it's a bit broader in scope and doesn't focus so much on just PHP.   I have a couple of licenses for Zend Studio Professional that I have been holding back to give away for a competition. So after writing yesterdays programming 'tips' I thought perhaps I should get my readers to submit their own tips and then give away one copy for what I think is the best 'tip' and then I will also hold a online vote for the second copy.   The basic process is to submit your favorite tip to Nick and he'll pick his favorite of the day. This happens each day and at the end of the week, there'll be a drawing for the licenses from each day's top tips.   Submit your entries via his contact form.