Automating Amazon research with the Zend Framework

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p. Posted over at “searchOpenSource.com”:http://searchopensource.techtarget.com the article is titled “Automating Amazon research with the Zend Framework”:http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1201528,00.html. Like most good examples, this one scratches an itch for Jason himself. He wanted a custom solution to track Apress’ catalog on Amazon.

p. He briefly discusses the why and why Zend Framework before diving right into the code.

bq. Spurred on by the enormous success of Rails, PHP developers have been hard at work creating a number of framework solutions. Notable efforts include Cake, Symfony, and, more recently, the Zend Framework. Because all of these solutions remain under heavy development, I suggest you spend some time experimenting with each to determine which best fits your present needs.

p. Since the Zend Framework is highly modular by design, Jason gives you a list of the components you need:

* Zend_Controller: This component is responsible for orchestrating the application’s execution, receiving requests and ensuring the appropriate action executes.
* Zend_Db: This component handles the framework’s database operations. It provides the ability to easily interact with a database both in an abstract fashion and with standard queries (the component is built on top of PDO and therefore supports all databases supported by PDO) and profile queries. It generally makes database-related tasks very easy to implement.
* Zend_Filter_Input: This component offers several solutions for filtering input, a task overlooked by many Web developers because of the tedium and complexity.
* Zend_Service_Amazon: This component facilitates the retrieval of information found within Amazon’s product database and made available through the aforementioned Amazon Web Services feature.
* Zend_View: This component generates the application interface or pages.

p. He then goes on to show you almost exactly how he did it. He give not only the how but a lot of the why. The end result is you should come out of this with the knowledge necessary to track your own books on Amazon. So, you’ve no excuse left, get out there and write a book! (After you’ve read the tutorial.)

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