The Zend Framework: an Introduction

The Zend Framework

The Zend Framework, an open source project fostered by the prominent PHP product and services provider Zend Technologies ( http://www.zend.com/) was at the time of this writing the most aggressively developed of the four frameworks. Additionally, the Zend Framework provides a variety of task-specific components capable of carrying out tasks that are becoming increasingly commonplace in today's cutting-edge Web applications. In addition to facilitating MVC-driven development, the Zend Framework can automate CRUD (create, retrieve, update, delete) database operations, and perform data caching and filter input. But what makes the Zend Framework particularly intriguing is the assortment of components it offers for performing nonessential but increasingly commonplace tasks such as creating PDF's, interacting with the Amazon, Flickr, and Yahoo! APIs, and consuming RSS feeds.

The rest of this chapter is focused on a fast-paced introduction to the Zend Framework's key features, serving to acquaint you with its usage as well as to excite you about the amazing boost in productivity it and similar frameworks have to offer.

Introducing the Zend Framework

Although all of the frameworks presented in the previous section are very powerful and worthy of further consideration, Zend's particularly unique approach to framework development led to the decision to explore it further in this chapter. To begin, Table 25-1 summarizes the components available by way of the framework, which should give you a pretty good idea of its diverse set of capabilities. This is followed by an overview of the installation process, and finally two examples. The first example is intended to show you just how easy it is to construct a Web site skeleton using the framework, while the second offers a somewhat more practical twist, using the Yahoo! Web Services component to facilitate sales research.

To begin, take a moment to review Table 25-1, which presents a partial list of the most interesting Zend Framework components accompanied by a brief description. In the two examples found later in this section, you'll learn how to deploy several of these components.

Table 25-1. A Partial Listing of Zend's Feature-Specific Components   

Table 25-1. A Partial Listing of Zend's Feature-Specific Components (Continued)