Zend Framework in Action

Darby has just announced the availability of 1.5 Preview Release!

This is a great time to download it and check out the new features.

From Darby’s post, the main new features are:

• New Zend_Form component with support for AJAX-enabled form elements
• New action and view helpers for automating and facilitating AJAX requests and alternate response formats
• Infocard, OpenID, and LDAP authentication adapters
• Support for complex Lucene searches, including fuzzy, date-range, and wildcard queries
• Support for Lucene 2.1 index file format
• Partial, Placeholder, Action, and Header view helpers for advanced view composition and rendering
• New Zend_Layout component for automating and facilitating site layouts
• UTF-8 support for PDF documents
• New Technorati, SlideShare, and Remember the Milk web services

Also, many of the other components have been improved.

Posted by Rob on 29th January 2008 under News | 1 Comment »

Martin Hujer has prepared a Zend_Filter_StripNewlines proposal along with prototype code (and tests).

This is a very simple filter that does what it says on the tin: removes all new line characters from a string and resolves issue ZF-2427.

In general I’m all for a rich set of filters and validators as you never know what you are going to need for a given project.

Posted by Rob on 26th January 2008 under News | 2 Comments »

In a couple of recent posts, Wil Sinclair has outlined some changes related to the packaging and distribution of the Zend Framework for version 1.5.

Extras
Extras are components that are developed under the ZF community process (i.e. CLA, unit tested, documented, coding standards, etc.) but are not supported commercially by Zend Technologies. From Wil’s post on it:

The distinction between components chosen for core incubator and those chosen for extras incubator is simple: Zend will provide support for components in core- but not extras- while providing distribution for both core and extras on the main ZF site… …The strict guidelines for quality that we have enforced for core components, such as test code coverage and documentation, would also apply to components in extras.

I think that this is a good idea as the community will be able to provide components that Zend may not be interested in supporting, but are very useful. I expect various Zend_Service_ components to end up here and with any luck, Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Odbc_Mssql!

Lean and Mean
In a separate post, Wil also indicated that version 1.5 of the Zend Framework will be distributed in two forms:

• “Lean and Mean”
• “Everything”

The “Lean and Mean” package will include just the core framework, excluding locale files.

The “Everything” package will contain everything(!) including unit tests, demos, locale files and the extras directory.

This should make the core download for ZF much smaller which is great for those of who don’t need the files in “Everything”.

All we need now is for someone to step up and make a PEAR channel for the Framework…

Posted by Rob on 26th January 2008 under News | 2 Comments »

The UK PHP Conference is a one day event on the 29th February 2008 and I’m speaking with Toby Beresford and Ian Christian about three PHP frameworks: Zend Framework, Symfony and CodeIgniter. You should go!

There’s a lot of great talks and I’m slightly miffed that I’m going to miss Zoe’s talk on testing PHP, so I really hope that the someone takes notes for me

The general plan is that we discuss each of the three frameworks in turn and then have a Q&A round-table type thing where we can compare and contrast the frameworks together. Obviously I’m talking about the Zend Framework and I want to talk about the key features about the Framework.

I’m not a “them vs us” type of person and so I’m not into bashing other frameworks, especially as I think that using any framework improves the productivity of most developers. However I do want to help emphasize the features of ZF that make it different.

One thing about the Zend Framework is that its scope is vast!

I thought, I’d start by brainstorming about which feature was the one that made you decide to investigate it more? For me, it was actually Zend_Search_Lucene that piqued my interest. I was struggling sorting out a better search system for one of our clients when I first heard about the Zend Framework, so it hit home that maybe that would be a better solution going forward. Since then, I’m now enamoured by the MVC system’s flexibility. Whenever I’ve needed to change something, I’ve found that there’s a flex point where I need it. Now that we are using the Framework in production sites, we’re finding the other features useful too.

So… what you think I need to cover to help people understand the strengths and weaknesses of ZF?

Posted by Rob on 23rd January 2008 under News | 7 Comments »

Darby has posted to the Zend Framework mailing list that plans are now in place for the first preview release of the next significant version of Zend Framework, version 1.5.

The code freeze will be Tuesday 22nd January at 9pm (PST), from which point changes to Zend Framework code will be carefully managed to focus on the 1.5 release.

In a followup post, Matthew rather helpfully posted a list of key new or improved components that will be included in 1.5. It was off the top of his head, so may miss some stuff out:

Okay, off the top of my head, new and/or improved components include: * Zend_Auth_Adapter_Ldap * Zend_Build/Zend_Console * Zend_Controller additional action helpers * ContextSwitch and AjaxContext * Json * AutoComplete * Zend_Form * Zend_InfoCard * Zend_Layout * Zend_OpenId * Zend_Search_Lucene improvements and bugfixes * Zend_View enhancements: * actions * partials * placeholders * New Zend_Service consumables (not sure which ones will be final) I’m sure there’s more, but, as I said, that’s off the top of my head. A good place to look is on the wiki proposals page (look at what’s currently in the incubator, and see what core proposals may be present that you haven’t seen before), and also in the issue tracker.

Wil also mentioned the All 1.5 Issues filter on the issue tracker which provides details about all the little changes that are going into this release.

Posted by Rob on 10th January 2008 under News | 2 Comments »

In preparation for the 1.5 preview release, Zend Form has moved to the incubator SVN tree.

This is a really good time to get a copy of the trunk and have a look at Zend_Form to find out how good it is and report any problems you have, especially with the API. Note that it’s still in active development and not completely stable.

Posted by Rob on 10th January 2008 under News | 2 Comments »

Following all the excellent comments that have been left, Matthew Weier O’Phinney has posted a comment on the Zend_Form proposal about the focus of the Zend_Form proposal:

1) Based on user requests, I’ll be investigating adding this functionality (element grouping) 2) I’m considering allowing each element access to all other values, as this would keep them atomic, but allow you to use other values as part of your validation. 3) empty() will be used for the requiredness check (i.e., !empty() will indicate a value is present) 4) Any ideas for lazy loading I’d gladly accept

I’m especially pleased to see element grouping as we don’t do forms without <fieldsets> and so it will make Zend_Form much more useful if it handles grouping of elements.

Allowing access to other values is useful for validating only if another form element is set, so I can see the benefit there. I think it would also be useful for those cases where you need the user to enter their password twice to confirm it.

All in all, it is good to see the proposal process working so well and I’m sure we’ll have a much more useful Zend_Form component as a result.

Posted by Rob on 1st January 2008 under News | Comments Off

Work has started on command line support for Zend_Framework projects.

Wil has posted on devzone information about three proposals related to building ZF applications from the command line:

The command line interface project is divided in to 3 separate Zend Framework proposals:

• Zend_Console
• Zend_Build
• Zend_Build for Core

Zend_Build_Script is a related proposal that aims to deliver a simple and powerful build system to the PHP community.

Head on over and comment on these proposals as they will make building a Zend Framework application much easier for everyone, not just those who follow the convention.

Posted by Rob on 21st December 2007 under News | Comments Off

Matthew Weier O’Phinney has posted to the mailing list to let everyone know that his composite Zend_Form proposal is ready for review:

I’ve prepared the composite Zend_Form proposal and have it marked ready for review. Please start the comments coming… If I don’t respond immediately, it’s due to the holidays, but I will get responses up as I have time. http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ZFPROP/Zend_Form

So, head on over there and see if there are any improvements you can suggest.

Posted by Rob on 20th December 2007 under News | Comments Off

Wil has posted that the next version of Zend Framework will be version 1.5, not 1.1 as was previously expected.

Version 1.5 will have the Zend_Layout and other View helper enhancements to round out the the view component of the Zend Framework. It will also have other improvements to the PDF and Lucene search components and it seems that form handling will also be looked at.

Posted by Rob on 18th December 2007 under News | Comments Off