Tutorial Review

Getting Started with Zend Framework
by Rob Allen

General impressions:

Overall this tutorial is very thorough. It covers the basics of installation and gives detailed explanations of the steps shown in the tutorial. The application it guides you through creating is general in purpose and can easily be applied to any application that deals with database interaction & web forms.

What it can teach you:

Basic use of the ZF Tool, used to start new projects and perform other actions easily (such as creating classes).

How to setup a new Zend Framework project.

Proper use of the MVC pattern.

Explains the required naming conventions when creating new objects.

How to configure your database connection using the application.ini

Create models to extend Zend_Db_Table_Abstract, used to interact with the database

Explains the use of Layouts & View Scripts

Post tutorial:

After completing this tutorial, I felt much more confident in the basics of the Zend Framework. Afterwards, I began re-writing one of my old PHP applications using these techniques. It was easy to transfer the knowledge provided from this tutorial and begin re-writing my image uploading application. I really enjoyed how easy it was to create the forms & have proper form validation without having to write it myself.

The only thing I didn't enjoy was that the tutorial is a .PDF file - but hey, there had to be something.

I highly recommend this tutorial to anyone starting out with the Zend Framework.

You can find it at: http://akrabat.com/zend-framework-tutorial/

Please leave a comment letting me know what you thought about the tutorial!

Zend Framework: The Basics

What is the Zend Framework?

Zend Framework is a component library for PHP 5. It helps developers create sophisticated web applications with a focus on maintainability, reusability, and performance.

It is open source, object oriented, and it uses the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern.

Why did I choose it?

There are many PHP frameworks available, such as CakePHP, Symfony or CodeIgniter, to name a few. However, I found that the documentation & community surrounding ZF to be an important factor in my decision. It is also backed by Zend, a company that has played a major role in PHP's success. This helps to ensure that it is in active development, and that it has been thoroughly tested to ensure security.

It is fully object oriented, giving the ability to extend the individual components, without having to edit the source code. It is also a loosely coupled framework, allowing a user to pick and choose which components are needed for an application. Because of this, it can be easily integrated into existing applications, or even used as a library if necessary... And it is a huge library - filled with components that cover almost all aspects of common web development.

Requirement checklist:

- PHP 5.2+
- Basic knowledge of object oriented PHP
- The will to learn!

For more information see the ZF Requirements

Please comment to let me know if you have any ideas or tutorials regarding the Zend Framework that you'd like me to write about!