R – Difficulties when learning Zend Framework 1.8

zend-framework

I am a newbie of Zend Framework.

I downloaded the Zend Framework and then followed the official quickstart tutorial to build a very simple registration form. But after that, I find very hard to learn different elements of Zend Framework.

Many tutorials mention frontController and registerAutoload() in the bootstrap file. However, it seems that I can't see it again in the code in version 1.8 (both in the official quickstart tutorial and Getting Started with Zend Framework 1.8). Many tutorials contain the old version of code and it seems very different in v1.8.

I start with writing registration form with password confirmation. I read the official document and find the custom validator for password confirmation. It just puts the class there and doesn't mention how I can use it. I don't know where I should put this file and I can't find any hints in Google. The "class not found" error always makes me sick (I've tried addPrefixElement, set_include_path but they don't work).

User registration, email activation, login, access control are very common tasks. But I don't even find a piece of sample code in v1.8 that I can run in my machine. I am very frustrated about Zend Framework.

Does anyone give me some advices?

Best Answer

I have also just started learning the zend framework. I also find alot of old tutorials that make learning confusing and hard, but there are some resources that I find help in learning the zend framework:

http://www.zendcasts.com/ - they have tutorials on ZF1.8 already, like Bootstrapping using Zend_Application, etc.

Some useful blogs that might help:

Forums to ask your questions:

http://www.nabble.com/Zend-Framework-Community-f16154.html - alot of ZF developers seem to be here to answer your questions :) much more than the official Zend Forums below ...
http://forums.zend.com/viewforum.php?f=69

As to class not found, I think you didn't autoload?

http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.loader.autoloader-resource.html

Related Solutions

R – How to increase Zend Framework learning speed

1) Do ZF developers use some kind of prototypes to roll out a basic site quickly?

The Zend Framework is a little too young yet for components in this area, however there is an unofficial PEAR channel. As of March '09 the thought leaders still seem to be debating the best ways to organize everything. I personally am most excited about the domain-driven initiatives as they will be the most robust.

2) Are there some site source codes to be built upon already available?

The best sources right now are the blogs, sites, and repositories of ZF thought leaders. Here's some links to get you started:

Brian here in the comments notes Rob Allen's tutorial. It was the first to really go beyond the basics and is the foundation for his book Zend Framework In Action.
Padraic Brady's blog application tutorial and svn repository has been one of the most complete examples showing how a lot of the components fit together. It's being migrated to an online book called Survive The Deep End but will take some time as he mentions in his blog that he's extremely busy.
Matthew Weier O'Phinney has done a few interesting setups which you can read about and clone from his github repository. The 'bugapp' branch especially in that repo has some interesting techniques. He's been working locally lately so the latest updates are in his blog.
Damien Mathieu has been working on a DRY framework based on best practices.

3) Is there some app generator or minor tool for pages with grids, records etc?

There is a scaffolding-generator as a part of Zend_Tool slated for release in ZF v1.8. It's currently in the incubator, I tried it last week and it works, but there are not many components generated in its current state.

Last week I finally took the time to gather sources together (which includes the Stack Overflow ZF questions feed). I've put them under a Zend Framework tag in Google Reader and will be refining the feed sources over time. In case you'd rather manage them yourself, here is the current OPML.

Best of luck! -Matt

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="1.0">
    <head>
        <title>expertseries | Zend Framework | Google Reader</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <outline title="Zend Framework" text="Zend Framework">
            <outline text="A.J. Brown" title="A.J. Brown" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ajbrowns_blog" htmlUrl="http://ajbrown.org/blog"/>
            <outline text="Armando Padilla" title="Armando Padilla"
                type="rss" xmlUrl="http://www.armando.ws/?feed=rss2" htmlUrl="http://www.armando.ws"/>
            <outline text="Benjamin Eberlei" title="Benjamin Eberlei"
                type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://www.whitewashing.de/about/rss/all" htmlUrl="http://www.whitewashing.de"/>
            <outline text="Bradley Holt" title="Bradley Holt" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" htmlUrl="http://bradley-holt.blogspot.com/"/>
            <outline text="Cal Evans" title="Cal Evans" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://blog.calevans.com/feed/" htmlUrl="http://blog.calevans.com"/>
            <outline text="Chris Hope" title="Chris Hope" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://feedproxy.google.com/ElectricToolboxBlog" htmlUrl="http://www.electrictoolbox.com"/>
            <outline text="Codecaine.co.za" title="Codecaine.co.za"
                type="rss" xmlUrl="http://www.codecaine.co.za/rss/" htmlUrl="http://www.codecaine.co.za/"/>
            <outline text="Douglas Brown" title="Douglas Brown"
                type="rss" xmlUrl="http://www.brownphp.com/feed/" htmlUrl="http://www.brownphp.com"/>
            <outline text="Federico Cargnelutti"
                title="Federico Cargnelutti" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://blog.fedecarg.com/feed/" htmlUrl="http://blog.fedecarg.com"/>
            <outline text="Jani Hartikainen" title="Jani Hartikainen"
                type="rss" xmlUrl="http://codeutopia.net/blog/feed/" htmlUrl="http://codeutopia.net/blog"/>
            <outline text="Juozas Kaziukėnas" title="Juozas Kaziukėnas"
                type="rss" xmlUrl="http://dev.juokaz.com/feed/rdf" htmlUrl="http://dev.juokaz.com"/>
            <outline text="Matthew Turland" title="Matthew Turland"
                type="rss" xmlUrl="http://ishouldbecoding.com/atom/1" htmlUrl="http://ishouldbecoding.com/"/>
            <outline text="Matthew Weier O'Phinney"
                title="Matthew Weier O'Phinney" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://weierophinney.net/matthew/feeds/index.rss2" htmlUrl="http://weierophinney.net/matthew/"/>
            <outline text="Michelangelo van Dam"
                title="Michelangelo van Dam" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://www.dragonbe.com/feeds/posts/default" htmlUrl="http://www.dragonbe.com/"/>
            <outline text="Mike Rötgers" title="Mike Rötgers" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://www.roetgers.org/feed/" htmlUrl="http://www.roetgers.org"/>
            <outline text="Nick Lo" title="Nick Lo" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://www.ingredients.com.au/nick/feed/" htmlUrl="http://www.ingredients.com.au/nick"/>
            <outline text="Pádraic Brady" title="Pádraic Brady"
                type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://blog.astrumfutura.com/feeds/index.rss2" htmlUrl="http://blog.astrumfutura.com/"/>
            <outline text="Raphael Stolt" title="Raphael Stolt"
                type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://raphaelstolt.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" htmlUrl="http://raphaelstolt.blogspot.com/"/>
            <outline text="Rob Allen" title="Rob Allen" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://akrabat.com/feed/" htmlUrl="http://akrabat.com"/>
            <outline text="Robert Basic" title="Robert Basic" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://feeds2.feedburner.com/robertbasic/blog/" htmlUrl="http://robertbasic.com/blog"/>
            <outline text="Stack Overflow ZF" title="Stack Overflow ZF"
                type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/zend-framework" htmlUrl="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/zend-framework"/>
            <outline text="Thomas Weidner" title="Thomas Weidner"
                type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://www.thomasweidner.com/flatpress/feed/rss2/" htmlUrl="http://www.thomasweidner.com/flatpress/"/>
            <outline text="Tom Graham" title="Tom Graham" type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://www.noginn.com/feed/" htmlUrl="http://www.noginn.com"/>
            <outline text="Zend Dev Zone" title="Zend Dev Zone"
                type="rss"
                xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ZendDeveloperZone" htmlUrl="http://devzone.zend.com/"/>
        </outline>
    </body>
</opml>

Php – Integrate Doctrine with Zend Framework 1.8 app

I wrote a Resource Bootstrapper for Doctrine and Zend Framework a few weeks ago and turned it all into a small wrapper framework, cause I think ZF and Doctrine are a great team. You can read the article here: http://coffeecoders.de/2009/06/using-the-zend-framework-18-bootstrapper-and-doctrine-110/

It is fully configurable via the Bootstrap resource configurations (example included, too). Unfortunately Doctrine searches for Models in the model folder with the same classname as the filename (which doesn't match the ZF naming scheme) so it was actually not possible to get rid of registering the Doctrine Autoloader. The resource Loader looks like this:

<?php
/**
 * Doctrine model loading bootstrap resource. Options must provide a connection string.
 * directory option for model directory is optional (default is ./models).
 * Further options will be set for the Doctrine manager via setAttribute (e.g. model_loading). 
 * @author daff
 */
class Cuckoo_Application_Resource_Model extends Zend_Application_Resource_ResourceAbstract
{
    public function init()
    {
        $manager = Doctrine_Manager::getInstance();
        $options = $this->getOptions();

        foreach($options as $key => $value)
        {
           if($key != 'connection' && $key != 'directory')
                    $manager->setAttribute($key, $value);
        }

        if(empty($options['connection']))
            throw new Exception("No database connection string provided!");
        Doctrine_Manager::connection($options['connection']);
        if(empty($options['directory']))
            $dir = './models';
        else
            $dir = $options['directory'];
        Doctrine::loadModels(realpath($dir));
        return $manager;
    }
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

R – How to increase Zend Framework learning speed

Php – Integrate Doctrine with Zend Framework 1.8 app

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