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.
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!
Unless I am the only one, there are probably a lot of you that are looking at existing applications and thinking about moving them to use Zend Framework. In this thread on the author forum a user (thanks geetarista) pointed to an interesting article by Chris Abernethy on Migrating to Zend Framework: Legacy Scripts.
Migrating an existing PHP application to Zend Framework can be a daunting task, especially if the migration must occur all at once. It is much easier to migrate the application in sections over a longer period of time.
Having not tested his idea yet I can’t say how effective it is but the idea looks good.
A new MEAP PDF has been released for those who have pre-ordered the book.
The big changes are:
Note that this MEAP renumbers all chapters due to the new chapter 3.
As always, let us know your thoughts on it over on the MEAP forum.
Zend Framework 1.5 has been officially released to the world and Zend have updated the website to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
There have been loads of improvements to the framework, my favourites being Zend_Form and Zend_Layout. Other areas which received a lot of attention include OpenId and LDAP authentication, Lucene and PDF improvements, along with the new ContextSwitch helper to make writing Ajax and REST applications easier.
A new Quickstart guide has been written to get you going or you can look at my Zend Framework 1.5 tutorial if you prefer PDF or a different style of writing.
New today too is a series of getting started videos by Mitchell Hashimoto to show you get you up an running with the Framework. There are four videos so far, each one around 10 minutes long which cover installing, bootstrapping, controllers and view, and extending your ZF application. Check them out!
With the 1.5 release, Zend Framework has really come of age.
The third release candidate of Zend Framework version 1.5 is now available for download. This release is shaping up nicely now and this release is nicely stable.
Officially, it’s not yet ready for production release, but you should be checking it out now ready to understand what changes will be needed to your sites when migrating. Fortunately, the documentation has a very useful chapter on migrating from 1.0.x to 1.5.0 which is a must read!
Since the only way to know about this is a single link on the right hand side of the main book page I thought I’d point out that the book has its own forum which is intended for the discussion of the book; mistakes we’ve made, things that aren’t clear, things you like, etc.
We are interested in all feedback and do make changes or additions according to your comments, although a side effect of Rob’s working on the popular, day-to-day topics that make up the first half of the book, has been that he faces the bulk of the questions (including from me!) so I’m a little nervous that bringing more attention to the forum is going to increase his workload. So, erh, sorry in advance if that happens Rob! Hopefully the next early access release should begin to balance that out a bit.
Cal Evans is reporting on DevZone that Zend Framework has won a “Jolt Productivity Award”.
Well done to the team and all the contributors.
The release-1.5 subversion branch of Zend Framework will be frozen tomorrow (at 9pm PST) in preparation for the release of the second release candidate for 1.5. The intention is to have all the new work for 1.5 completed by then. Going forward to release, only bug fixes should be necessary.
For components that are not ready for 1.5, it is intended to ship a separate incubator directory with 1.5. Depending on timescales, this may be released after the release of 1.5 though. The components in the incubator directory will include those that are not of high enough quality yet or that the proposed API hasn’t been exposed to enough developers to ensure that they provide the correct amount of flexibility vs ease-of-use.
Full information is on this thread on Nabble.
I gave a short presentation at the PHP London Conference on Friday. The session was a three way head-to-head between Zend Framework, Symfony and CodeIgniter. It went quite well, even though I was very nervous and I think we covered the important points of the frameworks.
I’ve also uploaded the slides for my Zend Framework overview in case anyone is interested enough to want to look at them!
