thislab.com - Web development and design by Fred Wu.

First of all, not all parts of the Zend Framework enforce the class naming convention, at least not upon calling ‘em. For example, view helpers are called directly by the ‘chopped’ class name:

// actual class name:
class Path_To_The_CustomViewHelper {}

// calling it in the view:
$this->CustomViewhelper();

Also, models are both named, and called by their class names without any paths (but yes we have to include them in the include paths).

You would think that in most cases calling the classes by their full names (with paths) should work, right?

Wrong.

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Two weeks ago I started working with Zend Framework at work. I chose to use Zend Framework for one primary reason: Zend. Even though I have plenty of experience with CodeIgniter and Kohana, I simply could not take any risks using them for a rather large project at a company I had just joined.

My experience so far is mixed. Probably because I am so used to the way CodeIgniter and Kohana do things, Zend Framework just appears utterly complicated and difficult to work with (at the beginning).

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Magento 1.0 is out.

Last time I checked (when it was 0.8 beta) I couldn’t install because my host doesn’t have pdo_mysql. Since then I requested pdo_mysql to be compiled and now is a great time to give it another spin. ;)

It should be very interesting because Magento is built on Zend Framework.

And alongside with the new release, they have revamped their website too.

The website looks better than before, but… oops… that happened when I tried to use the search box:

They have now included a quick start guide which is awesome. For some reason though, I still can’t find a change log on their website.

In my opinion the new website is still horrible to use, the home page is more confusing than ever (huh? why is the roadmap under ‘Give Back’?). I guess the designer didn’t read Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think. ;)

It feels very ‘Microsoft’y… fingers crossed…

Here is a brief overview of the system workflow:

Of course the actual system will be a lot more complex due to cross-referencing components, modules, libraries, helpers, but you get the idea. :)

Yesterday I have (sort of) announced the work on the framework based on Kohana and Zend Framework.

It is in early development stage but here is how it performs in Kohana. Granted it doesn’t do much at this stage. The screenshot below showcases the performance of the ‘transparent layer’ support, using the default Kohana profiler.

I will soon post a chart on how the framework relates to and integrates with Kohana and Zend Framework. :)