Zend Framework University

Since data mappers have been introduced in Zend Framework Quickstart lot’s of developers get confused about how to use the same pattern with relations. In one of his recent posts Michelangelo van Dam show to model relations between tables and how to create  complex data models build from data scattered over few dependent tables.

I was struggling getting my data models (as described in the Zend Framework Quickstart) to work with relations. My first solution was to create a database view that merged that data using joins to collect this data in a format that I could use in my data models. This was going great until I looked at my database where it contained over 20 views (along with 20 data models, mappers and db table gateways) ! So I said to myself there had to be another way.

His post is interesting reading for developers who would like to follow data mappers pattern presented in Zend Framework Quickstart and keep their code clean.

Michelangelo van Dam gave recently a presentation about testing Zend Framework applications. His presentation triggered discussion and lots of questions about setting up testing environment for Zend Framework. Because of that he decided to post tutorial about creating the environment, writing simple test, running it and generating some metrics.

We start off by setting our environment best fitted for our unit testing. I use a virtual linux system for this, using VMWare, but with some extra background research these global settings can be applied for your own (test) environment as well.

This is well written introductory tutorial about testing action controllers. It lets you start testing action controllers in 5 minutes.