An overview of the Zend Framework

by Marc Plotz

August 25, 2009

Introduction

Many developers are scared off by the thought of something as huge and confusing as the Zend Framework - I know this because I was once one of them. What I soon learned was that there is some pleasure in working with a framework that does most of the nauseating grind work for you. However, there is a trade off: you have to understand the somewhat pedantic nature of the code required along with the principles of the design pattern that is MVC (Model-View-Controller). Is it worth it? Let's take a look.

MVC - What the...

Ok, so you have been coding for years. Loops, dates and algorithms that go on forever are second nature to you. Why on Earth would you bother learning a completely new way to code? Well, its simple: this is not a new way to code, this is a better way to code and above all, MVC is structured, ordered and logical once you forget about everyone telling you about the psuedo-relationship between the controller and the view.

Thinking of MVC in terms of a design pattern is just crazy. What you need to think of is that MVC takes the Logic of the website(The Model) and separates it from the presentational aspects(The View) and the "thing" that communicates between the two is the controller. Many articles I have read talk of something called "Business Logic". I have no idea how to define this "business logic" in any way that makes sense to me. How I do think of it is in plain, straight forward terms: You submit a form, the data is processed, the page redirects to another location showing perhaps a different form. That is the essence of MVC. The controller CONTROLS the VIEW via the MODEL. There is much more to this, but that is the essence. The model is essentially the database part, the controller the processor, and the view is presented in PHP Template files with a phtml extension.

What is important here is that Zend Frameworks MVC Structure is extremely robust. It is probably the most powerful MVC structure in the PHP world at the moment, most likely because Zend Framework is built to handle close to Enterprise-Class application logic.

Hold itself up by its bootstrap

Bootstrapping refers to a self-sustaining process that continues without external help. The term is often attributed to Baron Munchausen, who, in a story called The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, pulled himself out of a swamp by his own bootstraps. In coding talk we say that bootstrapping is the process of pulling the entire script through a single file where everything is setup. Another bonus of Zend Framework is that the site is first funneled through the root file index.php, from where it is then bootstrapped outside of the root directory. What this does is make the entire application inaccessible to anything except the script itself. The security implications alone are a bonus, however some things could tend to get hairy from time to time, especially when it comes to serving images from below the web root on a shared server. But the benefits of bootstrapping in this way far outweigh the negative. Bootstrapping is not only safe, it makes sense. Set everything up in one place and control the setup from there.

You have mail, among other things

Yup. Zend makes things simple. From SMTP Mail to Database queries, it makes it simple and it makes it work without coding a thousand lines. To me the little things are also very cool, like pagination--it's as simple as cut and paste from a template then you customize it the way you like it. Zend form is not bad, although it will feature a little later in the "Where they got it wrong" section. Very strong on the good side are the SESSION sections as well as simple little things like Flash messenger. Access control is handled by ZEND_ACL, or Zend Access Control List. While ACL is not always simple to understand--trust me it gets tricky--it works well and does what you need it to. We also have ZEND_AUTH, which, like the name suggests, handles authentication simply.

Where they got it wrong

There isn't much that the folks at PHP got wrong, but I have to say it - THERE IS NOT ENOUGH SUPPORT OUT THERE. Downloading the manual PDF from framework.zend.com does not help you much either: it has examples that don't really mean anything. They show you the absolute bare basics and then clutter it up with nonsense you will rarely use. The most disastrous part is definitely Zend Form help. What you want is a little help with what they call Form Decorators. What you get is not much. Zend Form Decorators are quite complex and not really logical to implement, so you would think you get some support. Alas you don't.

Something I think would be really nice is database support for forms. I regularly work on a custom framework much simpler than Zend. What it does have is a good system that builds database tables according to the structure of forms throughout the site. It annoyed me a little that I had to build that functionality into my copy of Zend before I could really carry on without the hassle of manually building tables. Trust me, when you build sites that get complex enough, building tables could take days, especially when complex table relationships exist.

On the whole

On the whole Zend is a really stable MVC framework that keeps you coding and learning well into the night. It's stable, it's powerful and yes, it does take some time to get used to the setup. But when you do, trust me--you will be coding with a big smile on your face.

Happy Frameworking

Marc Steven Plotz