THIS WEEK IN THE ZEND FRAMEWORK #11

p. Wow, another week has gone by in the development of the framework; it’s a great time to be alive! Let’s look at what went down this week and who is talking about what.

* First on deck, “Zend_Pdf Barcodes”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00154.html started by Willie Alberty. This is actually a continuation of a thread from last week discussing Zend_PDF and creating images on the fly. Willy discusses the possibility of simply using bar-code fonts instead of creating new functionality.

* Bruno Couleau continued the “Zend_Config: XML file format”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00032.html thread from last week. He adapted the YAML code from another project to give Zend_Config a YAML file format. While the effort was well intentioned, since the code has not been submitted by the original author with a CLA the code can’t be used as part of the core framework. However, all is not lost, Bruno just finished a YAML parser for .NET and if I read his message correctly, he is considering writing one from scratch for the framework.

* Jeremy Knope started “Zend_Mail and mass mailings”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00165.html where he talked about some issues with Zend_Mail. Axel Christ pointed out his results when he sent 10,000 test emails to his mail server using Zend_Mail. While there were issues with attachments unrelated to the quantity of emails sent, he was able to send all 10,000 emails in a matter of minutes by disconnecting and reconnecting to the email server every 10 emails.

* After more discussion on the topic of “Generate GD Image and use it as source for Zend PDF Image”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00141.html, Kevin McArthur posted a patch that should allow the needed functionality. He states that it’s not yet ready to be submitted to SVN but it will solve the problem temporarily until he and Willie can fix it on a permanent basis.

* Kevin pointed out the need for a “binary string->stream conversion function” in “String Stream Wrapper”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00177.html. It was pointed out that there was already a “proposal for one in SVN”:http://framework.zend.com/developer/browser/trunk/documentation/proposals/deferred/Zend_StringStream written by Wez Furlong. Gavin asked that all concerned parties compare notes “_to see how much overlapping code might exist._”

* Willie Alberty announced in “Zend_Pdf: Looking for TrueType font test volunteers”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00181.html that TrueType support was no in Zend_PDF and they are looking for volunteers to test. If you have an interest in TrueType support or just have some spare cycles to kill, I know Willie would appreciate your help testing.

* William Waisse continued the discussion, “Recommended Practices, tutorials, howtos and Wiki”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00185.html and it quickly turned into a discussion on Wiki in general. Jayson announced that the team was adding a wiki to the “framework”:http://framework.zend.com site soon. “Soon” meaning days not weeks.

* It wouldn’t be a roundup without our favorite piece of code Zend_Search_Lucene. Haddad Said asked in “Zend_Search_Lucene – Searching for multiple phrases”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00195.html if it was possible to search on multiple phrases, as opposed to multiple words. Short answer, not yet. Alexander Veremyev pointed out that “_It needs boolean queries to be done. Some other important things are also need boolean queries. So it’s on a top of Zend_Search_Lucene TODO._”. Thanks Alexander for the update.

* Jazzcat opened an interesting thread “Problems with Zend::register/registry”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00204.html when he started asking questions about how, why and when to use the Zend_Config class. The resulting discussion should really be boiled down and stuffed into either the official docs or at least our new wiki as there are some excellent tips for how to use the class. If you are using Zend_Config or wondering if you should, this is a good read. (Hint Config!=Session)

* Thomas Weidner posted “Zend_Locale Proposal 1.0″:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00211.html this week. Keep’em coming. Fill that proposal bucket up for Proposal week!

* Jayson posted that this week (The week of June 12th, 2006) “kicks off Proposal Week”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00217.html. Actually, it turns out that it will be “Proposal Weeks” as this week will mainly be for collecting and organizing the proposals and next week will be review week. If you haven’t already, get your proposals in now. It’s still not too late to participate. (Well, it is if you are reading this after June 16th.) This thread drew a lot of discussion and many cheers from the crowd.

* Aissam BAZZAOUI submitted “Zend_Service_Google Proposal”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00252.html for the Week of Proposals.

* Nick Lo tossed out “Nested views/layouts and Zend_View_Abstract”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00283.html in which he posts “_I’m trying to put together a nested layout template/view script and trying to work out the best way to do so._”. Paul M. Jones helps out with a couple of ways to achieve the desired results and Simon Mundy throws another potential solution in allowing Nick to chose the best way for his application.

* Matthew Weier O’Phinney announced in “Zend_Mail and Zend_Mime changes in SVN”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00303.html that he has checked new code into the SVN to fix issued raised in several tickets. (…and the crowd went wild!) The changes resulted in some underlying structural changes to the classes involved. This opened up some additional flexibility not originally anticipated while preserving the existing API. +1′s all around for Matthew as everybody goes to grab the latest code and test their particular scenarios.

* Thomas Weidner submitted “Zend_Date_Proposal”:http://www.zend.com/lists/fw-general/200606/msg00311.html for consideration during Proposal Week. Included in this version are, Date/Time conversion Locale aware, NTP functions, Calendar functions, Add/Substract/Compare Dates.

* Matthew Turland stated in Zend_Service/Zend_Http_Client “some services, such as those provides a REST API for del.icious or Simpy, require HTTP authentication in order to be used. It would be nice to see internal support for this in Zend_Http_Client.” Shahar quickly replied “We are planning to implement HTTP authentication in the incubator version of the Zend_Http_Client. Implementing should be quite simple”. Thanks Shahar for the quick reply and update.

p. And once again, we come to the end. Hope you picked up a nugget or two of information this week. Don’t forget, Proposals are open to anyone so if you’ve got an idea, submit it. But first, Check out the “FAQ”:http://framework.zend.com/faq#q5 and submit you “CLA”:http://framework.zend.com/framework_cla_1.0.pdf.

p. Until next week…

p. =C=