A2 Hosting offer Zend Framework Hosting
It seems that A2 Hosting are now pre-installing Zend Framework.
This will make deploying a Zend Framework application even easier!
New MEAP PDF released
A new version of the Early Access PDF for Zend Framework in Action has been released. This is the first one with every chapter in it.
The biggest changes are:
- Chapters 2 through 7 have been edited
- New chapter 8 (forms)
- New chapter 16 (PDFs)
- Far more source code released
Let us know your thoughts on it over on the MEAP forum.
Zend Framework hits 5 million downloads
I know I’ve downloaded it a few times but the Zend April Newsletter is suggesting there must be a few more of you doing it too; Five million in fact!
It’s interesting that half of those downloads have been made in the last six months. If you consider that the more feature-rich version 1.5 was only released recently, I’d be surprised if that download rate didn’t continue for a while yet. Hopefully long enough to have one or two people interested in our book?!
If downloads convert to adoption then clearly knowledge of Zend Framework is going to be useful for PHP developers. For early adopters it’s also hopefully an indication that the gamble we took on the framework was worth it.
An example ZF Blog Application
Pádraic Brady has started a series of posts on his blog, building an example blog application. From part one:
The series will culminate with a complete blogging solution for my personal needs. I’ll cook it, bake it, beat it into submission, and then deploy it to replace this existing Serendipity installation. Along the way I’ll revisit numerous Zend Framework components, and probably praise or dissect them for problems or shortcomings. Along with my own mistakes, no doubt!
Part two continues by looking at the MVC architecture which is a good introduction into the design pattern and a must read for everyone!
Custom validators for Zend_Form_Element
Christer has written a tutorial on writing custom validators for Zend_Form_Element.
He covers how to ensure that two fields are the same:
The thing I also want to do is to ensure that the two email elements have the same value. The same goes for the two password elements. To do this I had to write a custom validator for these cases. A similar validator can be found in the Zend_Form docs but I wanted to be able to specify the names of the element(s) an element must be equal to when I add the validator instead of hardcoding them in the validator classes (like the example in the docs does).
He includes full source for the work he’s done so it is easy to follow along.
Review of Zend Framework in Action
Robert Bolton has posted a book review of Zend Framework in Action:
At times I felt like there may be too much ancillary topics covered, however, after finishing the book, I felt overall it was good that topics such as testing, deployment, and version control were covered. While there isn’t enough information to provide in depth coverage, it exposures the reader to these topics and provides enough information to get started, rather than just briefly mentioning it. And the coverage of the different components with the Zend Framework is comprehensive and understandable. If you are looking at working with the Zend Framework, I would definitely recommend this book.
He finds both good and weak points in the book and we will, of course, see what we can do to address the issues raised.
ZF Tutorials on the web
Federico Cargnelutti of PHP::Impact has posted a comphresensive list of ZF tutorials covering a significant cross-section of the components within Zend Framework.
He’s found tutorials for:
- Getting Started
- Zend_Acl
- Zend_Auth
- Zend_Controller
- Zend_Db
- Zend_Feed
- Zend_Form
- Zend_Layout/Zend_View
- Zend_Log
- Zend_Mail
- Zend_Search_Lucene
- Zend_Validate
- Web services
If you need to know something about these topics, then it’s probably worth bookmarking the post.
Magento 1.0 Released
Magento, the open source eCommerce platform has reached version 1.0, it’s first production release. Magento is fully featured offering many features including multiple websites, single page checkout, coupons, internationalization and many more.
Magento uses Zend Framework behind the scenes and so if you want to see one way to build upon ZF to create a fully featured application, the source may be worth investigation.
Zend_Layout webinar released
Last week, Ralph Schindler’s webinar on Zend_Layout and Zend_View was released along with the slides in PDF format. Cal has the details on Devzone. Ralph has also released a demo application showing how to put into practice the ideas he talks about.
Zend Framework 1.5.1 released
Less than ten days after the big 1.5 release there is already a new mini-release available which addresses over thirty issues.
One I’m particularly interested in, is the addition of an init() method to Zend_Form which, as in Zend_Controller_Action, is a convenience method called from __construct() allowing you to add your own initilization code more easily. Of course, on that note, my next task is to go and update the form code I’m currently working on!
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