The Zend Framework team announces the immediate availability of a beta release of version 1.9.0:

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

Note that because these packages are not stable, they will not be found on the zend.com CDN; please scroll to the bottom of the above page to find links to this release.

In preparation for this beta release, we have spent some time reviewing and polishing our test suite to ensure maximum stability, and also to provide compatibility with PHP 5.3. Note that at this time, we are not utilizing PHP 5.3-specific features, but only ensuring that Zend Framework will run without issues on PHP 5.3. This support is not yet complete, but will be in time for the final 1.9.0 release.

This beta release showcases many of the new features that will be available in the upcoming stable release:

  • Zend_Rest_Route, Zend_Rest_Controller, and Zend_Controller_Plugin_PutHandler, which aid in providing RESTful resources via the MVC layer.
  • Zend_Feed_Reader, which provides a common API to RSS and Atom feeds, as well as extensions to each format, caching, and a slew of other functionality.
  • Zend_Queue and Zend_Service_Amazon_Sqs, which provide the ability to use local and remote messaging and queue services for offloading asynchronous processes.
  • Zend_Db_Table updates to allow using Zend_Db_Table as a concrete class by passing it one or more table definitions via the constructor.
  • Zend_Test_PHPUnit_Db, which provides Zend_Db support for PHPUnit's DBUnit support, allowing developers to do functional and integration testing against databases using data fixtures.
  • Annotation processing support for Zend_Pdf, as well as performance improvements.
  • Zend_Dojo custom build layer support.
  • Numerous Zend_Ldap improvements.
  • Zend_Log_Writer_Syslog, a Zend_Log writer for writing to your system log.
  • Several new view helpers, including Zend_View_Helper_BaseUrl.

Again, this is a beta release; do not use it in production environments.

We hope to provide our initial release candidate early next week, so please test now so we can take care of any lingering issues in the existing functionality!