There is new tutorial from Vikram Vasvani, published on Zend Developer Zone, presenting how to integrate Flickr API into Zend Framework based application.
The really good stuff, though, is hidden behind the scenes. Like many Web 2.0 applications, Flickr exposes its data to the public via a REST API, making it possible to develop customized applications that run on top of the base service. This REST API allows access to a number of important functions, including photo searching, tagging and uploading; photoset retrieval; contact retrieval; and panda recommendations. It’s also pretty easy to integrate this REST API into a PHP application – and this article will show you how!
In the tutorial Vikram shows how to use Zend_Rest_Client component to call Flickr REST API methods and create simple photo gallery.
On the Xebee blog there’s a recent post looking at test-driven development with the Zend Framework and PHPUnit.
Over the past few days I was going through the Zend Framework reference docs and I found myself pleasantly surprised with all that the latest version of this web application framework provides. My first thought was to just acknowledge the speed in which PHP as a technology has been maturing. Out of the many new features, what stood out for me was the ease with which Zend Framework and PHPUnit complement and work with each other.
They show how they use PHPUnit, Zend_Test and Selenium to create database and acceptance/functional tests.
If your framework lacks some features, simply add it. This is exactly what Raphael Stolt did to add list feature support to Zend_Service_Twitter service.
Several months ago Twitter added the list feature to it’s public API. While debating some use cases for an event registration application I stumbled upon an interesting feature, which adds participants automatically to a Twitter list upon registration. This way registered and interested users can discover like-minded individuals and get in touch prior to any pre-social event activities. This post will show how this feature can be implemented by utilizing the Zend_Service_Twitter component, and how it then can be used in a Zend Framework based application.
In his post Raphael publishes his class extending Zend_Service_Twitter and adding missing functionality. He also shows how one can use it in controller to add users to Twitter’s list during registration.
In follow up to his post introducing Zend_Application component Matthew talks about writing custom and reusable component resources.
In my last article, I wrote about how to get started with Zend_Application, including some information about how to write resource methods, as well as listing available resource plugins. What happens when you need a re-usable resource for which there is no existing plugin shipped? Why, write your own, of course! All plugins in Zend Framework follow a common pattern. Basically, you group plugins under a common directory, with a common class prefix, and then notify the pluggable class of their location.
In his step-by-step guide he shows how create resource class following framework’s naming and coding conventions, make use of dependency tracking and make resource configurable using standard configuration files and bootstrapping mechanism.
Rob Allen has updated his famous Zend Framework tutorial to cover changes made in last week release of ZF 1.10.
As a result, I have updated my Zend Framework tutorial so that it is completely current. The main change I made was to remove the _init methods in the Bootstrap as they are no longer needed. I also take advantage of the new features of the zf tool to enable layouts and create forms. It’s a shame that it gets the class name of the form wrong though!
It’s worth mentioning that Rob is writing and constantly updating his tutorial since Zend Framework 1.0 release, and it’s probably most popular ZF tutorial on the web.
