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Zend Framework

A PHP Web Application Framework

About Zend Framework

Extending the art & spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase.

- framework.zend.com

More About Zend Framework

  • Open Source PHP Library
    • Born out of MWOP's PHp LibrarY
    • Developed by Zend, the community, and other vendors (Google, Yahoo!, Adobe, Microsoft, etc)
    • License based on new BSD license
    • PHP 5.2.4 or later
  • Object Oriented
  • Web Application Framework
  • Component Library = Loosely Coupled
  • MVC Implementation

Zend Framework by the Numbers

  • Over 10 Million Downloads
  • Over 500 Contributors
  • Over 1000 pages in our Reference Guide
  • Over 500 Examples in our Reference Guide
  • Almost 6 million hits on Google
  • Over 900 hits currently on Technorati
  • Over 120 projects based on, extending, or supporting Zend Framework at SourceForge
  • Over 280 projects based on, extending, or supporting Zend Framework at Google Code
  • Over 4000 resolved issues in our Issue Tracker

Models - The M in MVC

Classes that abstract and encapsulate business logic-Nick


A domain model in problem solving and software engineering is a conceptual model of all the topics related to a specific problem. It describes the various entities, their attributes, roles, and relationships, plus the constraints that govern the problem domain.

- Wikipedia

Models in Zend Framework

ZF leaves this layer up to developer, but does provide several patterns to assist. Models are NOT simply reading / writing to DB, Models can be persisted in numerous ways.

Doctrine in ZF2

Doctrine can be integrated with ZF2 using a module. Doctrine is an ORM / ODM based on the Data Mapper pattern. Entities are managed by an Entity Manager, which uses the Unit of Work pattern to persist entities transparently and efficiently

Views - The V in MVC

  • Defines what is presented to user
  • Render data sent from Controller
  • Accepts user input
  • Likely contains HTML Markup

Controllers - The C in MVC

The "glue" of the MVC pattern.

More about Controllers

  • Manipulate models
  • Determine which view to display
  • Could send JSON to respond to AJAX requests instead of sending HTML
  • Most experts recommend keeping the Controller as "skinny" as possible

Resources

"Things" that need initialized every request and made available to the rest of the application through a resource registry.

Resources can be initialized using resource methods in your bootstrap class or using resource plugin classes. The latter is preferred for re-usability.

Zend_Application_Resource_Cachemanager

Can be configured to lazy load multiple types of caches, e.g. APC and Memcache

Zend_Application_Resource_Db

Initializes a single Zend_Db adapter

Zend_Application_Resource_Dojo

Used to configure the Zend_Dojo view helpers

Zend_Application_Resource_Frontcontroller

Probably the most common resource you will load as it is used to configure Zend_Controller_Front. This resource provides the ability to set arbitrary front controller parameters, specify plugins to initialize, and much more.

Zend_Application_Resource_Layout

Used to configure Zend_Layout

Zend_Application_Resource_Locale

Used to setup an application-wide locale which is then used in all components that work with localization or internationalization.

Zend_Application_Resource_Log

Configure a single Zend_Log with multiple writers

Zend_Application_Resource_Mail

Instantiate a transport for Zend_Mail

Zend_Application_Resource_Modules

Used to initialize your application modules.

Note: modules are one area that the Zend Framework developers acknowledge they didn't get quite right. Zend Framework 2 handles modules much better.

Zend_Application_Resource_Multidb

Initialize multiple Zend_Db adapters

Zend_Application_Resource_Navigation

Configure a Zend_Navigation instance

Zend_Application_Resource_Router

Used to configure the router that is registered with the Front Controller

Zend_Application_Resource_Session

Configure Zend_Session and optionally initialize a session SaveHandler

Zend_Application_Resource_Translate

Initialize a Zend_Translate adapter

Zend_Application_Resource_Useragent

This resource provides the ability to configure and instantiate Zend_Http_UserAgent for use within your application.

Zend_Application_Resource_View

Used to configure a Zend_View instance. It also creates a Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_ViewRenderer and registers the ViewRenderer with Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker

Autoloading in PHP

You may define an __autoload function which is automatically called in case you are trying to use a class/interface which hasn't been defined yet.

- PHP.net

Autoloading in Zend Framework

Defers class loading until the last possible moment = performance boost. It is recommended to strip out require_once from everything but Zend/Loader/Autoloader.php

PEAR naming conventions

"Foo_Bar_Baz" corresponds to "Foo/Bar/Baz.php" on the filesystem

Namespace Matching

  • "Vendor" namespaces not PHP 5.3 namespaces
  • Zend_ and ZendX_ by default
  • Register other vendors, i.e. an Ign library
  • Return FALSE as quickly as possible if not matched

Fallback autoloading

DON'T DO IT!!

Uses include() which will trigger a PHP Warning every time it fails

Toggle error suppression

DON'T DO IT!!

Write better code!

Other features

  • Allow specifying custom callback for autoloading
  • Allow manipulation of the SPL autoload callback chain (Add another loader before or after ZF autoloader)

Plugins

Plugins are classes

May need to extend abstract class or implement an interface, but they are still just classes

Common prefix

Related classes share common prefix e.g. a library containing view helpers could contain a number of classes with prefix "Foo_View_Helper_"


Everything after common prefix is the "short name" e.g. "Foo_View_Helper_Bar", short name is "Bar"

What if plugin not found?

Once stack of prefix paths is exhausted, Zend_Loader_PluginLoader_Exception is thrown

Why do you care?

Override a view helper to change how a form element is rendered:


$view->addHelperPath('foo/view/helpers', 'Foo_View_Helper');

What components have plugins?

  • Zend_Application - resources
  • Zend_Controller_Action - action helpers
  • Zend_Feed_Reader - plugins
  • Zend_Form - elements, filters, validators, decorators
  • Zend_View - view helpers


Note: Zend_Front_Controller has a plugin system, but it is different. Plugins have to be registered individually.

That's all folks!

Nicholas Calugar

Senior Software Engineer

twitter.com/socalnick

https://github.com/socalnick


More detail: http://goo.gl/b1FF0

Code: https://github.com/SocalNick/ZF-Quickstart