This Week in the Zend Framework #9

p. Grab your helmets and flashlights guys and girls, let’s plumb the depths of that wonderful world we call the Framework mailing list. See the technical content ebb and flow. Dodge buzzwords as they fly about. Sift for nuggets of knowledge in the info-streams of the flame-wars. All of this and more in **This Week in the Zend Framework #9**

p. It just keeps getting better every week; this week is no expectation. We’ll skip the obvious topics of leadership musical chairs (because that eliminates a **lot** of the messages I have to read) and get straight to the good stuff.

* Let’s lead off with Zend_Config. Probably the most discussed item this week. This new class trying to make it’s way into the incubator was discussed in “Zend_Config-to-be … does concrete .ini form support anchors”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00586.html, ” Zend_Config Proposal version”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00610.html, “Zend_Config: comments?”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00795.html, “index 0 in Zend_Config … special case, or bug?”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00810.html, “anchors in Zend_Config?”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00817.html, “count-int Zend_Config output”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00831.html, “count-int Zend_Config output”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00831.html, “Zend_Config vs comments … back again”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00859.html ,and finally the much ballyhooed, “Zend_Config Proposal V3!”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00886.html. Holy smokes that’s a lot of discussion. I think it’s safe to say that by the end of the week, even OpenMacNews was running out of things to day about Zend_Config. (OK, it’s probably never safe to say that about Richard, but still.) Speaking of Richard, he opened the discussion on Zend_Config by asking if it will support anchors. After several emails shooting around the target, Andi finally nailed a bulls-eye with __”We don’t plan on implementing anchors for .ini at this point.”__ Andi got bonus points for being concise. He then went on to talk about the proposal itself, thanking Rob for all the work he put into reworking the propose based on the feedback over the past couple of weeks. This in itself generated another discussion surrounding the use of multiple dots and multiple inheritance. It quickly veered off the beaten path into the quagmire of “will Zend_Config have a write function?” Long story short; no. Richard re-emerged to discuss the use of comments in an INI file and the “special case” of index [0]. Regarding the latter, Rob, ever the vigilant one, quickly responded with __”I’d call that a bug”__. Richard started a thread on count-int. (or count-ING, there seems to be some confusion on what we are counting) The gist of it is that he thinks that there should be functionality in Zend_Config that allows you to count the number of items of a certain type. In one version of the thread, Richard and Rob exchanged pleasantries and both agreed that it should be possible. In the other version, Richard and Jayson exchanged questions until I was confused as to what they were talking about. Pick your favorite version. Finally, Rob opened a new thread with v3 of the proposal. Thank goodness he attached a copy of the proposal to his message because the link on his bolg is temporarily out of order. Thankfully, he seems to have fixed the link for those who prefer to download.

Let’s move on to another subject, shall we?

* Ralph Schindler posted “Zend_Session proposal ver3 + More Working Code”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00598.html. This surprised us all as it wasn’t on the topic of the week, Zend_Config, but it was still an interesting proposal. The short-lived discussion centered around the setting of array elements and the possible (but not popular) use of eval(). Thanks Ralph for the code samples and the proposal to mull over.

* Simon Mundy opened a short discussion on a patch he submitted, “Patch: Zend_Mime, Zend_Mime_Part, Zend_Mail”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00635.html. Thanks Simon for the code and thanks for opening a ticket in Trac. (He did, you know…it’s there, go find it yourself, what am I your butler? OK, fine, it’s “here”:http://framework.zend.com/developer/ticket/59! Satisfied?)

* OpenMacNews (Richard) opened the thread ” Smarty, backhanded notoriety, and production readiness…”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00651.html, (You knew I couldn’t NOT mention it) in which he explains that even though he is a Smarty fan, he has abandoned it. He also talks about the production readiness of ZF when he says:

bq. ZF, even as its evolving, “feels right” for implementing a site.

p. Thank you Richard for your insights.

p. Moving right along…

* Alexandre Riveira posted his “preview Zend_View_Pagination version 2 + url download”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00669.html. Thanks Alexandre, always good to see new ideas floated. Hopefully, one day this one will make it into the proposal bucket.

* Apparently the newly installed Trac system is working a little too well. Spammers have found it and are pounding it. “Spamming Trac”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00676.html is a discussion on how to prevent it. Looks like we are getting captchas.

* Johannes Orth posted a link and some sample code for his Feed_Builder class in “Feed builder”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00534.html. Thanks Johannes for the code and Martel Valgoerad (aka Michal Minicki) for the interesting discussion.

* OpenMacNews (Richard) fired up another discussion with his “where/how to dump the garbage in ZF? diy, or somewhere ‘in there’ already?”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00695.html. An interesting discussion of where and how to cleanup after himself or should the framework do it for him. He followed this up with a longer discussion “more GC musing wondering about registry extension”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00753.html. I probably don’t need to tell you (but it helps with my word count if I do) that this was more detailed discussion on garbage collection. Specifically, how to get the framework to help cleanup some images that he creates on the fly and need to be deleted when the objects are destroyed. This was an interesting discussion even though it did eventually slip off-track (but not onto rails) discussing the proposed “laboratory repository”. Jayson promised updates as they are available. Everybody shook hands and said goodnight.

* Andi posted a blurb about Google’s new Web Toolkit in the appropriately named thread, “Google Web Toolkit”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00696.html. He called for volunteers to build a server-side interface to the Java RPC. (Did I translate that right? I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Lots of interesting discussion here (and around the blogosphere) regarding Google’s newly released toy. It eventually died when someone mentioned rails.

* Ralf, Martel, Lee, Paul and Jayson all discussed the relative merits of different “Template processing styles”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00764.html. It wasn’t so much a discussion as a Panel because each simply replied to the original post with their opinion. It is interesting though and Ralf’s opening post on the subject was well researched.

* It just wouldn’t be a roundup with out a thread on Zend_Search_Lucene. Haddad Said started this weeks thread with “Zend_Zearch_Lucene – Text field type”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00769.html. John and Alexander both chimed in to help Haddad out with what turned out to be an old bug. Alexander indicated that he was aware of the problem and would work to resolve it.

* Richard (OpenMacNews) opened another discussion on ” ZF and Zend/Eclipse”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00796.html in which he asks how tightly ZF tightly ZF would be integrated into Eclipse. Jayson responded with __”We are setting up a liaison from the framework team to the Eclipse PHP team so that they can integrate the framework in ways both sides suggest.”__ Andi in a momentary flash of verbosity said

bq. You have to differentiate here between the Eclipse.org PHP IDE project and the Zend Studio. In the Eclipse.org project we are not likely to address the Zend Framework, or at least just make sure it’s pluggable, because it should be able to support other frameworks too. In Zend Studio, we’d definitely have some tighter integration with the framework but that will happen over time.

Thanks Andi for that explanation.

* Shahar Evron opened an interesting discussion with the topic of “Standard compliance in Zend_Http”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200605/msg00878.html. The general question was “How compliant should the framework be with existing RFPs. Willie Alberty summed it up best with

bq. I think the guiding principle should be be tolerant in what we accept, but strict with what we generate.

p. Great quotable line Willie!

p. It’s always amazing to me that I run out of material just about the time I get bored writing. Many thanks to all the “core contributors”:http://framework.zend.com/contributors, Jayson, and everybody who posted. Without your help, I’d be ad-libbing all of this. With that I’m going to say Good Night and Good Luck.

“=C=”:http://blog.calevans.com

One comment to “This Week in the Zend Framework #9”

svanpoeck1
May 23rd, 2006 at 2:11 pm

Reading your post, the sentence "Andi in a momentary flash of verbosity said" in the part about Eclipse IDE made me laugh out loud to my screen and give it a friendly tap on the back You made my day, Cal !

"With that I’m going to say Good Night and Good Luck"
Hmm I bet you just saw the movie

Keep them weekly roundups goin’ !
Steven