Archive for the ‘Tips and Tricks’ Category

Moving existing applications to Zend Framework

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.

Posted by Nick on 20th March 2008 under Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

Careful where you set your doctype

Along with the resolution of this view helper bug concerning view helpers not being doctype aware, comes a small gotcha if you are relying on setting your doctype in layouts like so:

echo $this->doctype('XHTML1_STRICT');

The problem is that view helpers will not be aware of this setting and will revert to the default setting HTML4_LOOSE. To avoid this be sure to set the doctype earlier in the bootstrap process, something like so:

$viewRenderer->view->doctype('XHTML1_STRICT');

Posted by Nick on 24th February 2008 under Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

Zend_Db_Table_Abstract in version 1.5

Zend_Db_Table has been significantly enhanced for version 1.5, mainly by Simon Mundy and is really really good. It's going to take me a while to poke around and find out all the new nuances!

However, I did find one gotcha that has affected me on my main project at work.

If you happen to have extended Zend_Db_Table_Abstract::_fetch() for some reason or another, be aware that it's changed in version 1.5.

It was:

PHP:
  1. /**
  2. * Support method for fetching rows.
  3. *
  4. * @param  string|array $where  OPTIONAL An SQL WHERE clause.
  5. * @param  string|array $order  OPTIONAL An SQL ORDER clause.
  6. * @param  int          $count  OPTIONAL An SQL LIMIT count.
  7. * @param  int          $offset OPTIONAL An SQL LIMIT offset.
  8. * @return array The row results, in FETCH_ASSOC mode.
  9. */
  10. protected function _fetch($where = null, $order = null, $count = null, $offset = null)
  11. {
  12.     // lots of stuff
  13. }


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and is now:

PHP:
  1. /**
  2. * Support method for fetching rows.
  3. *
  4. * @param  Zend_Db_Table_Select $select  query options.
  5. * @return array An array containing the row results in FETCH_ASSOC mode.
  6. */
  7. protected function _fetch(Zend_Db_Table_Select $select)
  8. {
  9.     // much less stuff
  10. }


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Just a heads-up in case someone else has customised this function for their own needs.

Related to this, Ralph Eggert recently discovered something else related 1.5 changes when extending Zend_Db_Table_Abstract and Simon Mundy helped out. The select object that is the parameter to _fetch() has a check in it to prevent you joining to another table. This is because if you join, you break the concept that a Zend_Db_Table represents a single table. However, you can get around it using the function setIntegrityCheck() like this:

PHP:
  1. protected function _fetch(Zend_Db_Table_Select $select)
  2. {
  3.     // extend select
  4.     $select->setIntegrityCheck(false);
  5.     $select->join(// do stuff);
  6. }


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The setIntegrityCheck() statement allows you to do a join in the select object and very cleverly puts the table object into read only mode, which is great.

Also, Example 10.136 of the Zend_Db_Table documentation has more information on how to use the $select to get back the data you actually want.

Posted by Rob on 30th January 2008 under Tips and Tricks | 1 Comment »

Gotcha when using Zend_Form from the incubator

With my workload now getting a little more manageable, I can finally join Rob and keep this site full of useful updates and info. For my first, here is a small gotcha for those, like myself, who like to work on the occasionally painful cutting edge of Zend Framework development.

If you are have the incubator in your include path and are playing around with Zend_Form you may get something like the following error...

Zend_Form::__toString() must not throw an exception

...unless you remember to add the incubator view helper path in your controller like so:

$this->view->setHelperPath('/path/to/trunk/incubator/library/Zend/View/Helper/');

The reason being that Zend_Form has a few view helpers that it needs from the incubator.

Otherwise, you can avoid this issue entirely by just using the 1.5.0 Preview Release.

Posted by Nick on 30th January 2008 under Tips and Tricks | No Comments »

Difference between two dates

In response to a mailing list question, Thomas, the lead developer of the I18n components pointed out that to find the difference between two Zend_Dates, you just have to subtract them:

PHP:
  1. $date = Zend_Date::now();
  2. $diff = $date->sub($birthdate);
  3. $diff->toString();


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Useful tip, that I've put here mainly so that I can find it again when I need it!

Posted by Rob on 27th January 2008 under Tips and Tricks | No Comments »