Decorators with Zend_Form
by weierophinney |
11 comments | Monday, May 5, 2008
Zend_Form has been lauded by many as a welcome addition to Zend Framework, and a flexible solution to the problem of forms. That said, one point of flexibility it offers has proved to be a pain point for many developers: decorators. This tutorial aims to shed some light on decorators, as well as provide strategies for creating your own decorators and combining them in creative ways to customize the output your forms generate.
View Helpers in Zend Framework
by weierophinney |
4 comments | Monday, April 28, 2008
Views in MVC are allowed to communicate with the Model (using read-only operations), and are allowed to perform display-related logic. That said, how do you actually access the model? And what if you have some fairly complex logic that you may need to repeat, or which you may not want to display directly in the view in order to keep it clean and easy to read? In Zend Framework, the answer is to use View Helpers.
Front Controller Plugins in Zend Framework
by weierophinney |
11 comments | Monday, April 14, 2008
Like Action Helpers, which I've discussed in a previous article, Front Controller Plugins in Zend Framework are often considered an esoteric, advanced subject. They are, however, remarkably simple to implement, and provide an easy way to extend the functionality and behavior of your entire web application.
Reading and Writing Spreadsheets with PHP
by vvaswani |
3 comments | Monday, March 31, 2008
When it comes to playing nice with data in different formats, PHP’s pedigree is hard to beat. Not only does the language make it a breeze to deal with SQL resultsets and XML files, but it comes with extensions to deal with formats as diverse as Ogg/Vorbis audio files, ZIP archives and EXIF headers. So it should come as no surprise that PHP can also read and write Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, albeit with a little help from PEAR. In this article, I’ll introduce you to two packages that make it surprisingly easy to hook your PHP scripts up to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and extract the data contained therein. I’ll also show you how to dynamically create a new spreadsheet from scratch, complete with formulae and formatting, and import data from a spreadsheet into a database. So come on it, and let’s get started!
The value of Web services for PHP
by Jack Herrington |
6 comments | Monday, March 10, 2008
Web services are the coolest technology I know of that ends up turning everyone off. I don’t know about you, but when I go to a lecture on Web services, invariably tons of acronyms come out, like Representational State Transfer (REST), Extensible Markup Language (XML), Remote Procedure Call (RPC), SOAP, and RSS. And then I start to nod off and dream about a land where free Krispy Kreme donuts grow on trees.
The HYSOCAMTT templating approach
by Brett Zamir |
1 comment | Monday, February 25, 2008
This article aims to highlight a approach which allows one to separate everything from one’s business logic to one’s design logic, to XHTML from CSS, one’s Javascript from the page structure, etc., while at the same time being able to be lazy and include, for example, CSS information within the same document (template) as one’s XHTML.
The ZendCon Sessions Episode 8: Building Scalable Development Environments
by Cal Evans (editor) |
3 comments | Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Hi and welcome to The ZendCon Sessions. I hope you enjoy today’s session as we listen to Shahar Evron present “Building Scalable Development Environments”.
Lifting the Skirt on Zend Framework 1.5: Zend_Auth and the OpenId Adapter.
by Cal Evans (editor) |
5 comments | Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Probably my one favorite aspects of Zend Framework is that you can pull pieces out and use them by themselves without having to build a complete MVC installation. Not that building out a complete installation is difficult but there are times when you just need a small piece, not the entire puzzle. Zend_Auth is one of those pieces that can be pulled out and used by itself. If you need authentication for an existing application Zend_Auth may just be the piece you are looking for.
Designing Klingon Warships Using Behaviour Driven Development
by padraic |
6 comments | Monday, February 11, 2008
A short time ago, I wrote an article for Devzone entitled “An Introduction to the Art of Unit Testing in PHP” which explained why testing, and especially automated testing, is an important aspect of developing in any programming language. I also offered a brief example of applying a design methodology called Test-Driven Development, which demonstrated that writing tests before code led to improved simpler design free of bugs.
