Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development
It took me a bit more time than I though to do this (one of the reasons will become clear soon) but here it finally comes.
It took me a bit more time than I though to do this (one of the reasons will become clear soon) but here it finally comes.
I think it is a great book for somebody who is somewhat acquainted with Zend Framework and wants to get really good at working with it. It covers a lot of ground, so if you never worked with ZF before you might be a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff going on (then again, maybe I am underestimating you 
), so you may want either skip some detail to return to it later when the need arises or have a run through a very basic tutorial for getting to know how the framework works before. The book itself has the basic startup section but I feel for a complete newbie it still might be a bit tough to keep up with the amount of the material in the book. That of course will come handy later when you got the basics figured out.
), so you may want either skip some detail to return to it later when the need arises or have a run through a very basic tutorial for getting to know how the framework works before. The book itself has the basic startup section but I feel for a complete newbie it still might be a bit tough to keep up with the amount of the material in the book. That of course will come handy later when you got the basics figured out.I personally am a big fan of learning by example and I think one line of code is often worth a hundred words, so I was really pleased that this book is based on building a complete application and comes with full application code to accompany it. The application is a storefront with an admin interface, so it covers most of the common tasks in a typical PHP application.
While it means that on the road there were certain decisions to be taken, and certain ways of doing things will be chosen over certain others, the author clearly identifies the decision points and explains the reasons – i.e. why certain things go to a model and not controller, why this extension point and not that one is used, etc. ZF has a very rich set of features, so there’s no single “right way” to do all things – but the book certainly shows you one of the ways to reach the complete and nicely structured application.
While it means that on the road there were certain decisions to be taken, and certain ways of doing things will be chosen over certain others, the author clearly identifies the decision points and explains the reasons – i.e. why certain things go to a model and not controller, why this extension point and not that one is used, etc. ZF has a very rich set of features, so there’s no single “right way” to do all things – but the book certainly shows you one of the ways to reach the complete and nicely structured application.
I actually took a bit of an experiment – as I was at the time building some ZF-based application, I decided to use the book as a first reference for any question that I needed with the app. I am pleased to report that the book indeed proved very helpful and I was able to find most of the advanced topics – like the use of ACLs, interactions between forms, views and decorators, modifying the behavior of the standard ZF classes, etc. – answered in the book and demonstrated in the code. The author successfully avoided the temptation to quote the manual extensively and instead picks up where the manual leaves off – i.e. how does one use stuff that the manual describes in practice.
The book also covers – albeit somewhat lightly – the topic that is neglected by so many other ZF books – namely testing. It shows how to setup the test environment and how to execute some basic application tests. Ideally, I would like the topic of tests to be much more prominent and featured as something parallel to development and not something you do after (though I know that’s how it rally happens many times 
) – but I know there’s only so much you can put into one book
) – but I know there’s only so much you can put into one book 
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