So, it turns out that I had a need for database migrations within a Zend Framework project that's using Zend_Db_Adapter. Those of you with long memories may remember that I created a proposal along these lines back in 2006. Nearly four years later, I read it again and implemented the core section. One of the comments, by Wil, asked why it's worth bothering with a DDL to create tables, columns, indexes etc. as sooner or… continue reading.

Posted on 29 March 2010 in Zend Framework 1

One of the dangers of frameworks in general is that you forget that they do lots of handy things for you. Consider Zend Framework's default error controller: public function errorAction() { $errors = $this->_getParam('error_handler'); switch ($errors->type) { case Zend_Controller_Plugin_ErrorHandler::EXCEPTION_NO_ROUTE: case Zend_Controller_Plugin_ErrorHandler::EXCEPTION_NO_CONTROLLER: case Zend_Controller_Plugin_ErrorHandler::EXCEPTION_NO_ACTION: // 404 error — controller or action not found $this->getResponse()->setHttpResponseCode(404); $this->view->message = 'Page not found'; break; default: // application error $this->getResponse()->setHttpResponseCode(500); $this->view->message = 'Application error'; break; } // Log exception, if logger… continue reading.

Posted on 4 March 2010 in Zend Framework 1

Zend Framework 1.10, was released a week or so ago. 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… continue reading.

Posted on 7 February 2010 in Zend Framework 1

This is another one of those posts that exists as a record for me so I can find it again if i need it! If you need to know whether a view helper exists before you call it, one way is to write a simple view helper to tell you: class App_View_Helper_HelperExists extends Zend_View_Helper_Abstract { function helperExists($name) { return (bool)$this->view->getPluginLoader('helper')->load($name, false); } } You can then use it in a view scripts like this: <… continue reading.

Posted on 12 January 2010 in Zend Framework 1

Sooner or later, you want to leverage Zend_Application better by creating your own resource plugins. This lets you reuse your initialisation work in multiple application that much easier and keeps your Boostrap class that much shorter! In my case, I wanted to create a resource for CouchDb that checked that the database was created and if not, create it. Creating your own plugin is easy enough. The obvious place is library/App/Application/Resource and a typical resource… continue reading.

Posted on 11 January 2010 in Zend Framework 1

When you deploy a Zend Framework website to a shared host, you usually cannot change the DocumentRoot to point at the public/ folder of the website. As a result the URL to the website is now http://www.example.com/public/. This doesn't look very professional, so we'd like to remove it. The easiest way, given a ZF project created using Zend_Tool is this: Create /index.php < ?php define('RUNNING_FROM_ROOT', true); include 'public/index.php'; This uses the index.php already created by… continue reading.

Posted on 8 January 2010 in Zend Framework 1