Zend Framework in Action

According to news coming out from @media, the BBC will be using Zend Framework for the presentation layer for bbc.co.uk.

Federico of PHP::Impact has more information here.

The benefits of Zend Framework that have been identified are:

• Zend Framework’s extensive unit tests, required for all contributed code, mean that exact situations can be recreated and problems diagnosed and pinpointed.
• The high-quality implementation of the MVC web application architecture provides a foundation for all Zend Framework applications.
• Supports data adapters for all major databases.
• Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n).
• Authentication, authorization and session management.
• Web services.
• Ajax support.
• Security.
• A vast community of talented developers.

It’s good to see Zend Framework being used in more and more places.

Posted by Rob on 4th June 2008 under Around the web & News | No Comments »

We’re a bit late with this information but for the sake of completeness we have to echo the news that Zend Framework and the Dojo Javascript toolkit are now partners.

Matthew Weier O’Phinney’s post has some interesting code examples while Andi Gutman’s post goes into more detail about the agreement itself.

Posted by Nick on 22nd May 2008 under News | 2 Comments »

Zend Framework 1.5.2 has been released. This is a bug fig release in the 1.5 series which fixes 50 issues.

The list of all the issues that have been addressed with this release can be found on the issue tracker.

Posted by Rob on 16th May 2008 under News | 3 Comments »

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.

Posted by Nick on 29th April 2008 under News | 2 Comments »

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.

Posted by Rob on 31st March 2008 under Around the web & News | No Comments »

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!

Posted by Nick on 27th March 2008 under News | 4 Comments »

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.

Posted by Rob on 17th March 2008 under News | 2 Comments »

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!

Posted by Rob on 13th March 2008 under News | 1 Comment »

Cal Evans is reporting on DevZone that Zend Framework has won a “Jolt Productivity Award”.

Well done to the team and all the contributors.

Posted by Rob on 6th March 2008 under Around the web & News | No Comments »

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.

Posted by Rob on 6th March 2008 under News | 2 Comments »