p. I wanted to introduce you guys interested in PHP MVC frameworks to a tutorial that focuses on the integration of the components of the Zend Framework into another brilliant framework: Code Igniter.

p. !

p. ! CakePHP is making quite an impact on the PHP Framework landscape. In this article, Daniel Hofstetter, one of the Bakers on the CakePHP team, shows us how to extend the CakePHP with helpers and components.

p. !

p. This week, Daniel Hofstetter and Felix Geisendorfer presented 2 interesting blog entries on our friend, CakePHP. Let’s get our CakePHP fix for the week and take a look.

p. Alexander Netkachev has built a CMS on top of the Zend Framework. In the grand tradition of ‘Eat your own dog food’ he uses it to power his blog. In this article, he shares with you how he did it.

Cal Evans takes another romp through the Zend Framework mailing list rounding up the events of the past week.

bq. Boy-howdy what a week in Frameworkland. So many things to talk about that I can’t even begin to list them all in this teaser. I guess you’ll have to read the article to get the details.

It is very easy to integrate other tools and components into the Zend Framework. I have already shown, how to integrate Smarty as a template engine and the eZ Components to expand the selection of useful components to build your own framework based on the Zend Framework.

Since the Zend Framework is currently (Preview Version 0.1.3) lacking an ORM-Layer (Object Relational Mapping), I want to show you how to integrate Propel. Propel allows you to access your database using a set of objects, providing a simple API for storing and querying data. So Propel can easily take over the model part in a MVC system.

Today the Zend Framework team has launched a shiny new website and tagged another minor version release of the framework. Since the last release in early March, the codebase features some module additions and several bug fixes, as well as updated documentation. The latest preview release is available for download from the framework website, or developers can access the Subversion repository directly for bleeding-edge checkouts.

To stay on top of important changes in the framework, visit the framework website or follow changes to the NEWS.txt file in the Subversion repository for release notes. Up-to-the-minute commit notifications are also available. To subscribe, simply send an e-mail to fw-svn-subscribe@lists.zend.com.

Zend is actively seeking contributions to the framework for various code modules. To get involved, visit the FAQ page on the framework website to learn more about the contribution process and requirements. Those wishing to be involved in the development process are highly encouraged to participate in the framework mailing list, as it is currently the preferred forum for collaboration. Send an e-mail to fw-general-subscribe@lists.zend.com to subscribe to the framework mailing list.

Framework documentation translations have begun for French, German, Dutch, Chinese, and Japanese.

Bug tracking is still being managed through the mailing list. Alternately, developers can submit bug reports to framework-feedback@zend.com.

Full release notes after the jump.

Inspired by this article I started to play around a bit to integrate the Smarty template engine into the Zend Framework. My ambition was to minimize the required code in the controller actions but stay close to the given Zend_View API. I also wanted to integrate the Smarty caching feature. Here is the code I came up with.