Here is a collection of the better Zend tutorials, resources and tidbits I have started collecting.

First off, here is probably the best quick tutorial to the ZF, or rather its the best that I have seen so far.

Something obvious, that cost me time, was that when you create a custom class in Zend for which to extend other classes such as controllers from, you must place the new custom class in your applications include path, e.g create a new directory in your applications dir called ‘custom’, and then add this to your damn include path

set_include_path(‘../library’ . PATH_SEPARATOR .
‘../application/custom’ . PATH_SEPARATOR . get_include_path());

Also important, in any child classes of the new custom class:

If we want an init()function in any of the child classes, we must also call parent::init() from that class.

Two decent Apress books on the Zend Framework, http://www.amazon.com/Pro-PHP-Patterns-Frameworks-Testing/dp/1590598199 and Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP. The latter is especially recommended…

The symlink for library directory on A2 is library -> /usr/lib/php/ZendFramework/latest/library/. Fascinating, I know. To remove a symlink, do unlink symbolic_link.

Zend Forms and Related

Fetching row data from mysql in Zend Framework.

From the official Zend docs, here’s the basics of a form controller – nice.

class UserController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
public function getForm()
{
// create form as above
return $form;
}

public function indexAction()
{
// render user/form.phtml
$this->view->form = $this->getForm();
$this->render('form');
}

public function loginAction()
{
if (!$this->getRequest()->isPost()) {
return $this->_forward('index');
}
$form = $this->getForm();
if (!$form->isValid($_POST)) {
// Failed validation; redisplay form
$this->view->form = $form;
return $this->render('form');
}

$values = $form->getValues();
// now try and authenticate....
}
}

And $values = $form->getValues(); returns an assoc array of values, like so:

Array ( [username] => pokero [password] => 99998883 [login] => Login )

To start off your form, probably best to do the following – set the form action and method:

$form->setAction('/resource/process')
     ->setMethod('post');

Also, to render a form in a view, just stick this in your view:

 <?php echo $this->form ?>

And here is a list of the validators shipped with the Zend framework (frustratingly hard to find on the Zend site  ), which I found on this great ZF blog:

• Alnum
• Alpha
• Barcode
• Between
• Ccnum
• Date
• Digits
• EmailAddress
• Float
• GreaterThan
• Hex
• Hostname
• InArray
• Int
• Ip
• LessThan
• NotEmpty
• Regex
• StringLength

OK, I eventually found them on the Zend site, here.

And a list of the different form elements:

• Zend_Form_Element_Button
• Zend_Form_Element_Captcha
• Zend_Form_Element_Checkbox
• Zend_Form_Element_File
• Zend_Form_Element_Hidden
• Zend_Form_Element_Hash
• Zend_Form_Element_Image
• Zend_Form_Element_MultiCheckbox
• Zend_Form_Element_Multiselect
• Zend_Form_Element_Password
• Zend_Form_Element_Radio
• Zend_Form_Element_Reset
• Zend_Form_Element_Select
• Zend_Form_Element_Submit
• Zend_Form_Element_Text
• Zend_Form_Element_Textarea

Form styling and decorators

Will be adding more on decorators here, but for now, just a quick one to sort the annoying dt and dd elements that render the labels on different lines in default forms. Just sticking a <br> tag after each <dd> will sort that:

<script type=”text/javascript”>

$(document).ready(function(){

$(“dd”).after( $(“br”) );

});

</script>

And something that really drove me mad for while trying to get the info, is the really simple way of rendering a different than standard view for an action:

$this->_helper->viewRenderer(‘popular’);

This was well hidden in the docs on Zend site, they really try and make shit difficult to find, f*ckers. The thing is most of the examples on the Zend site actually assume you are instantiating a View object from scratch – of course it is explained here that in your actions the view object already exists, and there is a much simpler way.

For setting up an automatic email verification system, this example from Cake PHP is great. And a very nicely written piece of code on validating identical fields. Good one on throwing exceptions.

For an example on a basic Zend Form in action, check out this Lotto Results checker form.

Something else you should really do is change the default htaccess from, for example,

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule !\.(swf|js|ico|gif|jpg|png|css)$ index.php

to the following, as suggested here. This has the major advantage that you can now add non-framework files easily to your public folder.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php

Useful redirect is return $this->_forward(‘index’);

And styling Zend forms with Dojo…simple example and worth a look.

And on that link above, here is some nice simple styling, easily expandable for Zend Forms:

/* Zend Form Styling */
.zend_form, .zend_form_dojo {
width: 700px;
margin: 5px auto;
padding: 2px;
overflow: auto;
}

.zend_form dt, .zend_form_dojo dt {
padding: 0;
clear: both;
width: 15%;
float: left;
text-align: left;
margin: 5px 5px 5px 0;
}

.zend_form dd, .zend_form_dojo dd {
padding: 0;
float: left;
width: 68%;
margin: 5px 2px 5px 0;
}

.zend_form p, .zend_form_dojo p {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

.zend_form input, .zend_form_dojo input, .zend_form textarea, .zend_form_dojo textarea {
margin: 0 0 2px 0;
padding: 0;
}