After a long pause i’m come back on my blog with a post about the development of a secure web login system in PHP with the use of Zend Framework. The issue to build a login system in a web application is quite common. The security aspect of a login system is absolutely important and in this post i have summarized some of the main security points. Of course this is not the final solution but, in my opinion, is a good point of start for PHP developers.

He goes on to show all the key steps required including the use of Zend_Form_Element_Hash to help secure against CSRF attacks.

All in all a good read and Zend Framework 1.8 compatible too

The key new features for me are:

• Namespaces
• Late static binding
• Closures
• Much better Windows support

There is a migration guide available, but you should also check out Cal Evans’ migration notes over at TechPortal too.

You can download it directly now, or wait for your favourite distribution to package it for you soon!

With ZF 1.8, we can now use the application.ini file and he shows the format of the lines required, along with setting it up so that you use your own name space.

I like my code nicely seperated in manageable blocks, that I can reuse whenever I want. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of the modules in Zend Framework. It isn’t always very easy to set it up though.

He covers how to set up modules using the zf command line tool along with a module bootstrap, before covering views and models. Reading this article will certainly help you understand how to use modules in your apps.

A while back we posted a blog entry on a simple Zend Framework example using Zend_Auth. The example consisted of a basic website that re-directed the user to a login page when they tried to access a restricted area of the site (eg. their Account page). Well some time passed and we got a little older and wiser in terms of using Zend Framework so we decided to try again – this time with a little more ambitious goals.

There’s already a demo site up, where you can download the source code.

Creating a nice, easy to maintain form, starts with a form class. Creating your forms procedurally in your controller/actions is horrid. please don’t do it.

Read the article.

Instead of whipping together a system that was targeted specifically for creating ZF based applications, specifically on the command line, and strictly generating code and not modifying existing code, we set out to build a system extensible in every regard that should concern a developer. Zend_Tool was designed to facilitate abstraction at all the necessary points where we felt that developers would want to extend the system.

He then goes on to show what Zend_Tool can currently do using a series of screenshots.

From the read me, new features include:

• Zend_Tool, contributed by Ralph Schindler
• Zend_Application, contributed by Ben Scholzen and Matthew Weier O’Phinney
• Zend_Navigation, contributed by Robin Skoglund
• Zend_CodeGenerator, by Ralph Schindler
• Zend_Reflection, Ralph Schindler and Matthew Weier O’Phinney
• Zend Server backend for Zend_Cache, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
• Zend_Service_Amazon_Ec2, contributed by Jon Whitcraft
• Zend_Service_Amazon_S3, Justin Plock and Stas Malyshev
• Zend_Filter_Encrypt, contributed by Thomas Weidner
• Zend_Filter_Decrypt, contributed by Thomas Weidner
• Support for file upload progress support in Zend_File_Transfer, contributed by Thomas Weidner
• Translation-aware routes, contributed by Ben Scholzen
• Zend_Json expression support, contributed by Benjamin Eberlei and Oscar Reales
• Zend_Http_Client_Adapter_Curl, contributed by Benjamin Eberlei
• SOAP input and output header support, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
• Support for keyword field search using query strings, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
• Support for searching across multiple indexes in Zend_Search_Lucene, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
• Support for page scaling, shifting and skewing in Zend_Pdf, contributed by Alexander Veremyev
• Locale support in Zend_Validate_Int and Zend_Validate_Float, contributed by Thomas Weidner
• Phonecode support in Zend_Locale, contributed by Thomas Weidner
• Zend_Validate_Iban, contributed by Thomas Weidner
• Zend_Validate_File_WordCount, contributed by Thomas Weidner

Download it here.

I have also completely revised and updated my Zend Framework tutorial over at akrabat.com to support the new Zend_Tool command line tool and Zend_Application for bootstrapping.

The video goes though how to create a tag cloud where each tag has a title, weight and optional URL. Zend_Tag_Cloud will automatically render the tags as unsigned lists with appropriate font sizes to show the relative weights of each tag.

He then shows how to style the list so that it looks like a traditional tag cloud that you see around the web.

Please download and test this release thoroughly over the next few days so that we can fix any urgent issues or documentation problems before the final release next week. Please remember to provide feedback on our issue tracker and ask any questions on the appropriate mailing list. Again, the Zend Framework community does NOT recommend this release for production use. We do, however, recommend evaluating new features in this release with existing and new applications.

Download and test your sites now!