Zend Framework new preview release 1.8

The all new Zend Framework preview release 1.8 is here! It brings us
* Tools for dependable bootstrapping
* A command line client for creating and maintaining projects
* Devices for menus, sitemaps, breadcrumbs, and whatnot
* Full support for Amazon EC2 and S3
* A simple and reliable framework
* New additions and bug fixes
Check out Mathew’s blog for more detailed description.

Zend Framework 1.7.0 is now available

New Zend Framework released with many new components and features.

Zend Framework 1.7.0 is now available from the Zend Framework download site:

http://framework.zend.com/download/latest

This release introduces many new components and features, including:

• Zend_Amf with support for AMF0 and AMF3 protocols
• Dojo Toolkit 1.2.1
• Support for dijit editor available in the Dojo Toolkit
• Zend_Service_Twitter
• ZendX_JQuery in extras library
• Metadata API in Zend_Cache
• Google book search API in Zend_Gdata
• Preliminary support for GData Protocol v2 in Zend_Gdata
• Support for skip data processing in Zend_Search_Lucene
• Support for Open Office XML documents in Zend_Search_Lucene indexer
• Performance enhancements in Zend_Loader, Zend_Controller, and server components
• Zend_Mail_Storage_Writable_Maildir enhancements for mail delivery
• Zend_Tool in incubator
• Zend_Text_Table for formatting table using characters
• Zend_ProgressBar
• Zend_Config_Writer
• ZendX_Console_Unix_Process in the extras library
• Zend_Db_Table_Select support for Zend_Paginator
• Global parameters for routes
• Using Chain-Routes for Hostname-Routes via Zend_Config
• I18N improvements
o Application wide locale for all classes
o Data retrieving methods are now static
o Additional cache handling methods in all I18N classes
o Zend_Translate API simplified
• File transfer enhancements
o Support for file elements in subforms
o Support for multifile elements
o Support for MAX_FILES_SIZE in form
o Support for breaking validation chain
o Support for translation of failure ,messages
o New IsCompressed, IsImage, ExcludeMimeType, ExcludeExtension validators
o Support for FileInfo extension in MimeType validator
• Zend_Db_Table_Select adapater for Zend_Paginator
• Support for custom adapters in Zend_Paginator
• More flexible handling of complex types in Zend_Soap


The Zend Framework team would like to thank everyone who made this release possible. As always, our generous ZF community has provided countless new features, bug fixes, documentation translations, etc. We'd also like to thank Adobe Systems and Wade Arnold for contributing the new Zend_Amf component. A big thanks to PHP Belgium and everyone who participated in bug hunt day and/or the Zend Framework bug hunt week.


Source:- prlog.org/

Zend Framework 1.7 Includes DB2/400 Adapter

Zend Technologies, the commercial entity behind the open source PHP programming language and its related development tools, has delivered a new release of its suite of PHP tools. Zend Framework 1.7 includes a general release of the new DB2/400 adapter introduced earlier this year, which should improve the interoperability of PHP applications and DB2/400 data. The update also includes various other AJAX-related enhancements.

Zend provided an early release of the DB2/400 adapter with the delivery of Zend Core for IBM i 2.6 in September. At the time, Zend said the new adapter would provide better, faster, and more secure access to existing data and applications residing on System i server.

After poking and prodding at beta sites and the resolution of various technical issues, the DB2/400 adapter was declared ready for prime time at Adobe Systems's MAX conference in San Francisco last month, which was the venue for the launch of Zend Framework 1.7.

Zend Framework 1.7 brings other enhancements, in addition to the new data adapter. For instance, load times have improved by 25 to 50 percent, Zend says, and support for the Action Message Format (AMF) data transfer protocol should improve the product's integration with Adobe's Flex and Flash programming technologies for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs).

Other enhancements include a new editor for the Dojo Toolkit, called dijit. Dojo, which was introduced to System i shops with Zend Core for IBM i 2.6, is an open-source collection of JavaScript tools designed to help developers implement graphical and architectural elements of AJAX applications. Zend Framework 1.7 also introduces support for JQuery, a popular AJAX library that was contributed by the Zend community to the larger open source community.

In further news, Zend is now selling support subscriptions for IBM i customers utilizing Zend Framework 1.7. The subscriptions give customers access to Zend resources for gaining support over the Web and troubleshooting or answering basic questions. The standard support package costs $1,500 and gives customers access to five Web-based incidents and two hours of consulting, while the premium package, which costs $2,500, provides 10 Web-based incidents and three hours of consulting.

Source:- itjungle.com/

PHP Zend Framework 1.7 adds Adobe support

The open source Zend Framework 1.7 is now available expanding the PHP framework to work better with Adobe Flex and AIR applications. Adobe and Zend announced back in September that they would be collaborating for Zend Framework and now they've delivered.

"Adobe and Zend have been working together to make Flex and AIR application development much easier for PHP developers," Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans blogged " This announcement marks a significant milestone in those efforts with the production release of the Zend_Amf component in ZF 1.7. Now PHP 5 developers can use the open, binary AMF3 protocol (think of it as ActionScript's native tongue) as easily as any other server-client protocol in Zend Framework."

Action Message Format (AMF) is the protocol that Flex uses to talk to the back end enabling both Flex and Flash based applications to exchange data with servers.

The Zend Framework 1.7 also includes some other neat features that PHP developers will likely benefit from. Among them is the ZendX_JQuery module which provides integration with the JQuery JavaScript toolkit. There is also support in the Zend_Search_Lucene module for indexing Office Open XML documents which could be a very useful thing too.

The 1.7 release comes just under three months after the Zend Framework 1.6 release which made Figlets into something useful for CAPTCHA (if you haven't read that story, you should). Great to see that regular progress continues to be made on this PHP framework. It's something that continues to re-inforce the fact that PHP is still a very modern and capable language for web application development.

Source:- blog.internetnews.com/

Zend Framework Coding Standard for PHP

Naming Conventions

1. Classes: -

Zend Framework standardizes on a class naming convention whereby the names of the classes directly map to the directories in which they are stored. The root level directory of the ZF standard library is the "Zend/" directory, whereas the root level directory of the ZF extras library is the "ZendX/" directory. All Zend Framework classes are stored hierarchially under these root directories..

Class names may only contain alphanumeric characters. Numbers are permitted in class names but are discouraged in most cases. Underscores are only permitted in place of the path separator; the filename "Zend/Db/Table.php" must map to the class name "Zend_Db_Table".

If a class name is comprised of more than one word, the first letter of each new word must be capitalized. Successive capitalized letters are not allowed, e.g. a class "Zend_PDF" is not allowed while "Zend_Pdf" is acceptable.

These conventions define a pseudo-namespace mechanism for Zend Framework. Zend Framework will adopt the PHP namespace feature when it becomes available and is feasible for our developers to use in their applications.

See the class names in the standard and extras libraries for examples of this classname convention. IMPORTANT: Code that must be deployed alongside ZF libraries but is not part of the standard or extras libraries (e.g. application code or libraries that are not distributed by Zend) must never start with "Zend_" or "ZendX_".

2. Filenames: -

For all other files, only alphanumeric characters, underscores, and the dash character ("-") are permitted. Spaces are strictly prohibited.

Any file that contains PHP code should end with the extension ".php", with the notable exception of view scripts. The following examples show acceptable filenames for Zend Framework classes.:

Zend/Db.php
Zend/Controller/Front.php
Zend/View/Helper/FormRadio.php

File names must map to class names as described above.

3. Functions and Methods: -

Function names may only contain alphanumeric characters. Underscores are not permitted. Numbers are permitted in function names but are discouraged in most cases.

Function names must always start with a lowercase letter. When a function name consists of more than one word, the first letter of each new word must be capitalized. This is commonly called "camelCase" formatting.

Verbosity is generally encouraged. Function names should be as verbose as is practical to fully describe their purpose and behavior.

These are examples of acceptable names for functions:

filterInput()
getElementById()
widgetFactory()

For object-oriented programming, accessors for instance or static variables should always be prefixed with "get" or "set". In implementing design patterns, such as the singleton or factory patterns, the name of the method should contain the pattern name where practical to more thoroughly describe behavior.

For methods on objects that are declared with the "private" or "protected" modified, the first character of the variable name must be an underscore. This is the only acceptable application of an underscore in a method name. Methods declared "public" should never contain an underscore.

Functions in the global scope (a.k.a "floating functions") are permitted but discouraged in most cases. Consider wrapping these functions in a static class.

4. Variables: -

Variable names may only contain alphanumeric characters. Underscores are not permitted. Numbers are permitted in variable names but are discouraged in most cases.

For instance variables that are declared with the "private" or "protected" modifier, the first character of the variable name must be a single underscore. This is the only acceptable application of an underscore in a variable name. Member variables declared "public" should never start with an underscore.

As with function names (see section 3.3) variable names must always start with a lowercase letter and follow the "camelCaps" capitalization convention.

Verbosity is generally encouraged. Variables should always be as verbose as practical to describe the data that the developer intends to store in them. Terse variable names such as "$i" and "$n" are discouraged for all but the smallest loop contexts. If a loop contains more than 20 lines of code, the index variables should have more descriptive names.

5. Constants: -

Constants may contain both alphanumeric characters and underscores. Numbers are permitted in constant names.

All letters used in a constant name must be capitalized.

Words in constant names must be separated by underscore characters. For example, EMBED_SUPPRESS_EMBED_EXCEPTION is permitted but EMBED_SUPPRESSEMBEDEXCEPTION is not.

Constants must be defined as class members with the "const" modifier. Defining constants in the global scope with the "define" function is permitted but strongly discouraged.

Source:- framework.zend.com/

Zend Framework Coding Standard for PHP

PHP File Formatting

1. General

For files that contain only PHP code, the closing tag ("?>") is never permitted. It is not required by PHP, and omitting it prevents the accidental injection of trailing whitespace into the response.
IMPORTANT: Inclusion of arbitrary binary data as permitted by __HALT_COMPILER() is prohibited from PHP files in the Zend Framework project or files derived from them. Use of this feature is only permitted for some installation scripts.

2. Indentation

Indentation should consist of 4 spaces. Tabs are not allowed.

3. Maximum Line Length

The target line length is 80 characters. That is to say, ZF developers should strive keep each line of their code under 80 characters where possible and practical. However, longer lines are acceptable in some circumstances. The maximum length of any line of PHP code is 120 characters.

4. Line Termination

Line termination follows the Unix text file convention. Lines must end with a single linefeed (LF) character. Linefeed characters are represented as ordinal 10, or hexadecimal 0x0A.

Note: Do not use carriage returns (CR) as is the convention in Apple OS's (0x0D) or the carriage return/linefeed combination (CRLF) as is standard for the Windows OS (0x0D, 0x0A).

Source:- framework.zend.com/

Zend Framework update focuses on AJAX integration

Zend has added integration with the Dojo JavaScript toolkit in the new version of its PHP programming platform.

Zend Framework 1.6, released yesterday, makes it easy to integrate AJAX and JavaScript with PHP applications, according to the company. There is a Dojo view helper for setting up the Dojo environment, along with form elements and decorators for integrating with Dojo’s Dijit library, which provides interface widgets. A new JSON-RPC server implementation and class can manipulate Dojo data envelopes in Zend.

Also new in Zend Framework 1.6 is interoperability with the SOAP Web services protocol, which Zend said makes connecting Web services to data across the Internet easier. New features around SOAP include client and server classes that can operate in both WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and non-WSDL modes, and auto-discovery. Unit testing features for controllers enable agile practices like unit testing and test-driven development, where a developer writes tests prior to writing code.

“Functional tests for your application will be much easier to write now that Zend Framework has built-in support for testing controllers,” said Wil Sinclair, Zend’s development manager.

Other new features and improvements are a component for displaying large data sets from multiple sources, a service providing text-based CAPTCHA images, and smaller XML documents that are easier to read, the company said.

Zend will tout version 1.6 at ZendCon 2008, taking place Sept. 15-18 in Santa Clara. The conference offers presentations and networking opportunities for PHP developers and business managers.


Source:- sdtimes.com/

PHP and the Zend Framework

In a previous series of articles in IT Jungle, I introduced you to the enablement of the PHP language, via Zend Core, on i5/OS and the capabilities that PHP provides for the development and deployment of Web applications integrated with i5/OS objects and DB2 data. (See Related Stories below.) The customer interest in PHP has been high and I receive numerous questions at customer events on its usage of PHP on IBM i. Many people also ask about Zend Framework. What is Zend Framework? Can I use it on i5/OS? How can I integrate the advanced functionality that Zend Framework provides?

Let's begin with a general description. Zend Framework is a collection of pre-canned objects (classes and function calls) that facilitate the building of modern applications and Web services by integrating advanced functionality into existing Web applications. Zend Framework includes several components:

• Zend_Acl: Provides Access Control List (ACL) functionality and privileges management
• Zend_Config: Simplifies the use of configuration data for Web applications
• Zend_Controller and Zend_View: Provides the infrastructure for Model-View_Controller (MVC) Websites
• Zend_Feed: Provides a simple way to work with live syndicated feeds
• Zend_Filter and Zend_Validate: Facilitates the development of secure Websites by providing basic tools necessary for filtering and validation
• Zend_Gdata: Google data APIs that provide read/write access to services hosted at google.com such as Spreadsheets, Calendar, Blogger, and CodeSearch
• Zend_Mail and Zend_Mime: Create and send email messages
• Zend_PDF: Creates, reads, and modifies PDF documents from PHP applications

The Zend Framework library should be located in a directory that is in the include_path for Zend Core. Typically this would be:

/usr/local/zend/core/include/zend/include

Zend Framework is included and installed as part of Zend Core as of Version 2.5. It can also be downloaded from http://framework.zend.com.

The programmer's reference for Zend Framework can be found at http://framework.zend.com/manual/en. I recommend you refer to it often as you are looking to integrate advanced functionality into your Web/PHP applications.

Let's take a look at one of the Zend Framework capabilities, Zend_Pdf, which facilitates working with PDF documents from your PHP application. A full example of Zend_Pdf can be found at http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.pdf.usage.html. To create and load PDF documents from your PHP application you would first create a PDF class through a statement such as:

$pdf = new Zend_Pdf();

The above statement creates a new instance of the Zend_Pdf object and that instance is referenced through the $pdf variable. Once the instance has been created a document can be loaded from a file through the following call:

$pdf = Zend_PDF::load($filename);

Changes to the PDF document can be saved by calling the 'save' method of the PDF object as follows:

$pdf->save($filename, true);

Note: Prior to usage of the Zend_Pdf class and related function calls you need to include the Zend.pdf framework by including the following line in your PHP code:

require_once 'Zend/Pdf.php'

Do you have questions on PHP and/or MySQL on IBM i? I would love to hear them and have a chance to feature them in future columns in IT Jungle. Send your questions for me to Ted Holt via the IT Jungle Contact page.

Erwin Earley is an advisory software engineer in the IBM lab located in Rochester, Minnesota, and heads up the Open Source Technologies Center of Competency for System i within the System i Technology Center. At that center, he provides education and enablement services for open source related technologies on System i including Linux, MySQL, and Zend's PHP. Earley currently holds certifications from Red Hat as well as the Linux Professional Institute and is a candidate for certification with Zend's PHP.

source:- itjungle.com/

Zend Framework Documantation

Component Goals & Benefits

Succinct descriptions of the major components of Zend Framework, their goals, and benefits. Each developer in the Zend Framework community who worked on a component has explained their thinking behind its design. This includes:

• High level goals for each component
• Design intent of the component
• Benefit gained from using this component
• A link to the Programmer's Reference Guide for that component

Programmer's Reference Guide

Written in a book format, it contains the information a developer needs to actually understand and use each Zend Framework component. Such as:

• Description & goals for a particular component
• Details on the various capabilities of the components
• Code snippets on how to use the component to accomplish real world examples

API Guide

The API Guide is low level phpdoc information for the Zend Framework components. It is useful for developers needing detailed reference information. It contains information such as:

• Interface information
• Details on how program elements interact, which elements use others
• Where in the source code an action or series of actions occurs
• How to extend the code to add new functionality