free Zend Framework screencasts - Zendcasts

RESTful Delete with SLIM, jQuery and JSON

jon — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:14:00 +0000

PUTting Data with jQuery

jon — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:10:44 +0000

Building a JSON End-Point With SLIM and jQuery: Part 2

jon — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:57:23 +0000

Building a JSON Endpoint with SLIM (Part 1)

jon — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:07:41 +0000

SLIMming Out Your Controller

jon — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 17:32:14 +0000

PHAR Out Autoloading (HD!)

jon — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:35:29 +0000

Fun with PHAR

jon — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:35:29 +0000

A quick look at how you can work with PHP Archives. I’m trying to build up my vim skills at the same time, so please forgive my vim fumbles!

Couchbase Interview with Chris Anderson

jon — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:17:33 +0000

As we all wait for Zend Framework 2 to come into full form, I thought it would be a great opportunity to explore some new territory in the web development community.

Recently, NoSQL databases have become all the rage. I asked J. Chris Anderson a committer on the open source Apache CouchDB project as well as a founder of Couchbase to spare a few minutes to talk about Couchbase and how its helped drive innovation and offer performant tools for mobile providers as well as major online properties.

Zendcasts is exploring some new kinds of content, so please let us know what you think in the comments!

Creating Custom Application Resources

jon — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:13:15 +0000

Writing Custom Zend Filters with HTMLPurifier

jon — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:01:59 +0000

HTMLPurifier Integration

jon — Mon, 23 May 2011 20:43:07 +0000

Event Listeners in Doctrine 2

jon — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:41:19 +0000

Many-to-Many with Doctrine 2

jon — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:49:39 +0000

One-to-Many with Doctrine 2

jon — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:18:54 +0000

Zendcasts is Moving to HTML5 Support

jon — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:37:07 +0000

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been trying to provide some much needed upgrades to Zendcasts. Part of this has been revamping the forum software, but more importantly, thanks to the support of Miguel Pinto, we’ve been able to serve up the Zendcasts series in OGG Vorbis as well as H.264.

Miguel is an active member of the Portuguese PHP Users Group and has graciously offered his CPU cycles and time for Zendcasts. If you would like to help out, please feel free to contact us.

Unit Testing Doctrine 2 Entities

jon — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 17:49:01 +0000

Like the video? Support Zendcasts:

Setting up Zend_HTTP_UserAgent

jon — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:02:27 +0000

Serving Mobile Templates

jon — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 09:12:56 +0000

Unit Testing Action Helpers

jon — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:04:33 +0000

Introducing Action Helpers

jon — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 13:11:53 +0000

A/B Testing with PHP Using PHPScenario

jon — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:57:09 +0000

James Sylvanus has been working on an A/B testing tool that plugs straight into your Zend Framework application. The component plugs right into Zend_Db and he’s including a step-by-step set of instructions on his forum. Read more about PhpScenario.

Unit Testing Zend_Form

jon — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:04:24 +0000

Unit Testing Models

jon — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:08:10 +0000

Unit Testing your HTTP Requests

jon — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:12:43 +0000

A couple days ago, Till Klampaeckel just posted a very interesting plugin for PHPUnit that helps you debug your Zend Controller testcases by providing header information. He’s posted the code on GitHub and provided a real-world example of how to use the plugin for debugging your unit tests effectively. This approach takes advantage of the event-listener architecture of PHPUnit.

Consuming RSS Feeds with Zend_Feed_Reader

jon — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 13:54:16 +0000

Creating RSS & Atom Feeds with Zend_Feed

jon — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:53:20 +0000

Zendcasts.com just got a facelift!

jon — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 20:58:05 +0000

After several months and many revisions, I’ve finally managed to scrape together a new design for zendcasts that aims to make the site more organized. This new design also hopes to encourage looking at videos in series rather than just a bunch of episodes in chronological order. Another design decision was to take advantage of some new CSS features like rounded corners and gradient rendering in webkit and gecko. Please let me know what you think of the new design!

I’d also mention a big thank you to everyone who helped me put this together, I couldn’t have done it without you!

Zendcasts update from Africa

jon — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:30:16 +0000

The Zendcasts publishing schedule has slowed down a little bit due to a trip that my wife and I have undertaken to the village of Rundu in Namibia (that’s in Africa) where we are volunteering with the Bahá’í community. While we have internet connectivity here, unfortunately, it’s costly for a site like Zendcasts that’s currently no more than a donation based educational resource. We should be back to cheaper internet pastures in a few weeks! Thank you all for your support, questions and patience!

Jon Lebensold

Autocomplete Control with ZendX_JQuery

jon — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:36:09 +0000

Working with ZendX_JQuery

jon — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 22:28:20 +0000

Selectively Adding CSS with Zend_Layout

jon — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:09:19 +0000

Painless HTML Emails with Zend_Mail

jon — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:32:08 +0000

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Enjoy!

Transparent Logging with Zend_Log

jon — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 16:07:58 +0000

First of all, I’d like to thank you all for your patience! Zendcasts takes quite a bit of time and research to put together and I’m deeply touched by all your support.
On a personal note, my wife and I are heading out of North America in a week to visit Namibia and South Africa for 3 months. I’m going to do my best to keep up Zendcasts on a weekly basis, however my connectivity and upload speed will be limited. We’ll see how it goes!

Now for today’s episode:

I was working on a project for a client the other day and noticed a couple of lines in the ErrorController for automatically logging errors with Zend_Log. In 10 minutes, you can have a fully integrated logging framework. I also implement a singleton pattern for reusing your Zend_Log configuration (defined in the application.ini) anywhere else in your application.
Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.
Enjoy!

Small Hiatus for Zendcasts

jon — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:58:47 +0000

Hello dear listeners!

Every week (or usually 10 days) I try and put up new and fresh content about the Zend Framework, however as of late, work with my clients has taken precedence. I value every one of your comments and forum posts and have no interest in folding the site or letting it grow stale. Like last year around this time though, I’m going to be taking a small break from Zendcasts for the next month. Thanks to all of you for your contributions, I know that your feedback has helped me become a better developer.

Jon Lebensold

Reporting with Zend_Tool and Zend_Log

jon — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:16:05 +0000

Reporting with Zend_Tool and Zend_Log

This video uses a collection of powerful PHP libraries in order to illustrate how easy it really is to build a command-line tool for reporting against XML files. We start off by logging visitor statistics in the controller into a log file with Zend_Log. Once data has been collected, we’re then able to utilize SimpleXML, Zend_Date and the Zend_Tool component to build out a very simple reporting tool. This is of course just an example of what’s possible. What comes to mind for me is building a cron job for generating reports based on the zf.sh executable, or even just doing backups at the command-line with the help of a fully integrated Zend Framework installation.

I’ve noticed that configuration information isn’t properly loaded into Zend_Tool and am still trying to figure out the design decisions there. You’ll notice that I was having some timezone issues with regards to Zend_Date and it seems that specifying a timezone in my application.ini file didn’t resolve the issue.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Enjoy!

Integrating Zend_Tool Into Your Application

jon — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 21:30:32 +0000

This screencast should help you setup Zend_Tool in your Zend Framework application. Zend_Tool is a command line entry point into your application. Currently, Zend_Tool is used to scaffold (build generic files) the Zend Framework project structure, modules, controllers, database table classes and other tedious processes. The goal of this video is to start looking at how we can generate our own Manifest and Provider classes so that custom command line tools can be integrated into the Zend Framework application.

The advantage of such integration is far reaching: deployable web applications using the Zend Framework can have “installers” and other frameworks, like Doctrine, can easily become first class citizens within the Zend Framework eco-system.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Enjoy!

Ajaxify Your Zend_Form Validation with jQuery

jon — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:06:11 +0000

We’re going to take what was put together in the last 3 videos and now include some server-side validation that will appear asynchronously. This is an example of using Zend_Form as a validation tool via JSON.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

UPDATE: as a couple people have mentioned, you can cut down your IndexController even more by using the Zend_Json view helper:
public function validateformAction() { $f = new Form_Registration(); $f->isValid($this->_getAllParams()); $this->_helper->json($f->getMessages()); }

Enjoy!

Encapsulating Business Rules with Zend_Validate

jon — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:56:09 +0000

In this video, we’re going to work on building a custom validator for our composite form element for phone numbers. The nice thing about this validator is that it can then be applied to any sort of textbox. Next week, we’ll ajaxify our final form with a handful of lines of jQuery.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

ServerGrove has offered to sponsor 3 videos in March! ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc”. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out (referral). They’ve also added an additional coupon for “Mini Hosting” plans, get $2 off by using code “zcmini”.

Preparing Custom Elements for Zend Validators

jon — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:19:30 +0000

This is part in my litte series on Zend_Form will cover how to prep our composite form element for standardized Zend_Form validators. This will help lead us into building a Zend_Form validator for our phone element. It might help to start with episode 49.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Writing Composite Zend_Form Elements

jon — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:34:18 +0000

This video should help you build your own composite Zend_Form element. We’ll be building a phone element. The phone element will have 3 textboxes, one for geographic location, area code and local code. In the following videos will add a custom cell phone validator and some ajax validation.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Creating Custom Zend_Form Decorators

jon — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:58:55 +0000

This little video tutorial should set you up for building your own custom Zend_Form decorators in 15 minutes. I’ll show you how you can make the necessary class and have it easily added to your existing Zend_Form_Decorator configuration.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

In other news, ServerGrove is giving Zendcast viewers a coupon! ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc”. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out (referral). They’ve also added an additional coupon for “Mini Hosting” plans, get $2 off by using code “zcmini”.

Zend_Form Decorators Explained

jon — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:05:45 +0000

One of the pain points for folks who are starting to work with the Zend Framework is the Decorating functionality found in the depths of Zend_Form. I’ve witnessed countless instances when a developer becomes excited by Zend_Form’s easy-to-implement form validation and creation, only to become frustrated by countless hours of fighting with Zend_Form_Decorators. This video is a humble attempt on my part to walk through how Zend_Form Decorators work and how you can reason your way through a desire result. I couldn’t have gotten my own head around this implementation of the decorator pattern without Matthew Weier O’Phinney’s excellent posts and his original devzone article.

UPDATE: check out this blog post / tutorial for ZF 1.10.0: http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/learning.form.decorators.html

I’ll show you a bit about how Zend_Form_Decorators are constructed and how to take the default zend_form layout and transform it into a table.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

ServerGrove is giving Zendcast viewers a coupon! ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc”. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out (referral). They’ve also added an additional coupon for “Mini Hosting” plans, get $2 off by using code “zcmini”.

Logging with Timestamps and Doctrine Event Listeners

jon — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:43:10 +0000

This short video is going to be the last in my 2009-2010 series on Doctrine 1.2. I’m wrapping it up with a little example of adding timestamps, logging and using Doctrine’s event listener architecture.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

ServerGrove will be sponsoring 3 videos this month! ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc”. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out (referral). They’ve also added an additional coupon for “Mini Hosting” plans, get $2 off by using code “zcmini”.

Introduction to Zend_Mail

jon — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:30:21 +0000

A big thank you to Ryan Horn for putting together this great screencast about Zend_Mail. Ryan took the time to talk about how to setup a dev environment that uses a gmail account. This is perfect for folks like myself who work in a development environment that’s behind an annoying ISP firewall on SMTP (port 25). Ryan Horn is a web developer based out of Buffalo, feel free to reach him by email.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Logging in Users using Doctrine and Zend_Auth

jon — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:12:40 +0000

Here’s the second part of my Doctrine / Zend_Auth example. In 15 minutes, we create a logout, login and protected area that’s reliant on the ZC_Auth_Adapter adapter we created in last week’s video. Notice how there’s no code in the IndexController exposing the authentication implementation,

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Also, a big thank you to ServerGrove for extending their support of Zendcasts for January. ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc”. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out (referral). They’ve also added an additional coupon for “Mini Hosting” plans, get $2 off by using code “zcmini”.

Writing a Zend_Auth_Adapter with Doctrine

jon — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:56:38 +0000

I’ve been using Doctrine a lot in my own work, and recently found myself itching to have tighter integration between Zend and Doctrine when it comes to user logins. Luckily, Zend provides a very simple interface with regards to Zend_Auth. This way, it’s easy to decouple your persistence layer (in my case Doctrine) from the authentication layer. I’ve borrowed from Palo Verede’s wonderful article on Doctrine and Zend_Auth and I invite you to check his blog out.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Deep Integration between Zend and Doctrine 1.2

jon — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:53:44 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk online about finding the best approach for bringing Zend and Doctrine 1.x together. This video is my humble approach of combining some of the learning brought about over the last few weeks on Zendcasts, as well as suggestions from Doctrine developers.

The goal of this video is to show how you leverage the existing resource loading tools in Zend to have a model structure that reflects Zend’s best practices. This video builds on the last Doctrine video, but if you’re familiar with both frameworks, you should be able to follow along. Enjoy!

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Also, a big thank you to ServerGrove for extending their support of Zendcasts for January. ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc”. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out. They’ve also added an additional coupon for “Mini Hosting” plans, get $2 off by using code “zcmini”.

Zendcasts Live Webinar with Google Wave and Intuit QuickBase

jon — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:02:30 +0000

Hey all. This was a little late coming, but its here now!

A couple of months back, I was invited to Intuit’s Boston office to speak about the Zend Framework and how it could be used to leverage Intuit’s online database product, QuickBase. With my recently acquired Google Wave account in hand, I was itching to try and make something. I put together a little google wave gadget demo. Unfortunately, my “live” zendcast wasn’t as smooth as expected, but I hope you still get something out of it. Check out the first Zendcast live webinar! You can also download the project files if you wish to take a gander.

Doctrine Relations and Zend MVC

jon — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:52:45 +0000

This short podcast covers how you can easily build a form using Zend’s MVC model via Zend_Controller and using Doctrine for persistence.

You can download the source code or browse it online. Enjoy!

Doctrine Relations and Data Fixtures

jon — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:29:33 +0000

This episode of zendcasts will cover how we can write Data Fixtures and extend our data model to include a simple one-to-many using Doctrine’s schema.yml file. I also noticed in the code of my last example that Model loading wasn’t working properly. I cover the fix in the video, however I’d like to highlight it here too. In your _initDoctrine() method, make sure you load the models:
Doctrine::loadModels($doctrineConfig['models_path']);

also, I’d like to extend a welcome to the folks at ServerGrove Networks for sponsoring this episode of Zendcasts. ServerGrove specializes in Zend Framework hosting and they’ve offered a 10% rebate on hosting with coupon code “zc“. If you’re looking for a host, be sure to check them out.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Edit: I spoke to Guilherme Blanco (one of the core developers behind Doctrine) and he kindly brought up some things I should bear in mind for my Doctrine / Zend set.
Doctrine’s autoloader configuration can be scaled back by doing PEAR style Model Loading (new to 1.2). Also, you can use Doctrine_Core instead of Doctrine since everything has been moved to Doctrine_Core in order to follow Zend-style namespacing.

lastly, you can register your own CLI tasks as part of Doctrine’s CLI script or just write them in the scripts/doctrine.php file. With this, you could have your newly-generated models placed in the necessary folders. I’ll be experimenting with this in the coming week.

Writing Doctrine Unit Tests with Zend_Test

jon — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:40:34 +0000

Building on the Introduction to Doctrine 1.2 video, this video will show how you can easily test the persistence of Doctrine models within the Zend_Test environment.

I also touch briefly on how to setup the latest version of MAMP with phpunit.

Enjoy!

Introducing Doctrine 1.2 Integration

jon — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:55:26 +0000

By popular demand, I’ve put together an introduction to Doctrine 1.2 integration with the Zend Framework. Doctrine is a fantastic ORM (object-relational mapping tool). If you’ve jumped from NHibernate or Hibernate and are itching to have a powerful tool for handling database relationships, Doctrine is probably your best bet. On the mailing lists, there’s a lot of talk about integrating Doctrine 2.0 into the 2.0 release of the Zend Framework. Regardless, this will help you get up to speed today. In next week’s video, I’ll show you how you can unit test those models in the Zend Framework.

Enjoy!

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Live Zendcast Tomorrow in Boston!

jon — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:51:06 +0000

Jon Lebensold, founder of Zendcasts.com will be writing a Google Wave Gadget in Boston at Intuit’s East coast office. Intuit is setting up a live webinar which you can attend by registering on the Zendcasts website.

If you’re a PHP developer interested in building apps on Google Wave or want to watch someone build an AJAX application with web services like Google Wave and Intuit’s QuickBase, this free webinar will be worth spending a lunch hour at your desk.

QuickBase is online database software that helps business teams collect, manage, and share information. Users can create their own custom applications or customize a variety of ready-to-use applications for project management, sales force automation, and IT management without writing code.

The webinar takes place Wednesday, November 18 at 12:00 (noon) Eastern Standard Time (GMT -05:00).Register online now.

Introducing Zend_Translate

jon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:01:57 +0000

One of the big things that the Zend Framework has over other frameworks is the built-in locale and language tools provided by Zend_Translate and Zend_Locale. All this comes with plugins into Zend’s templating system via Zend View Helpers. This video covers setting up some language-friendly routes, writing a custom language switcher Zend Controller Plugin and then running some a CSV-formatted language file.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Like the video? Support Zendcasts:

Moving Bootstrap Code to Configuration

jon — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:32:56 +0000

We’re going to build on what was covered in the last video and work with Zend Controller Plugins to specify a special layout for each module in our application. We’ll also look at how we can clean up the configuration of our Bootstrap.php file by moving as much configuration as possible into the application.ini file. Included in this video is a very quick look at how the Zend Framework’s resources are defined and loaded.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Protecting Assets with Zend Controller Plugins

jon — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:50:05 +0000

I had to take a little hiatus the last few weeks, however I’m hoping to get back into a weekly posting schedule.

This video is an introduction in how to effectively use Zend Controller Plugins. The Zend Documentation refers to Zend Controller plugins being part of the Action Stack which is a simple data structure that can be filled with a bunch of plugins which will run in succession.

We’ll create a simple asset protection script using the Zend Framework’s built in Zend Controller Plugin architecture.

Grab a copy of the project or browse the repository.

Using Zend_Cache to speed up Web Service calls

jon — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:00:52 +0000

A short video showing how you can test and implement Zend_Cache on a class that makes a really slow request (like a web service call).
This is part 4 in a four part series on Google Docs and Google maps. While this example shows how to cache a Class to a file, you could easily modify the code to work with other caching backends such as a memory-based caching engine or something like Zend Optimizer or APC.

Previous Parts

Show Synopsis

0:00 – What is caching
4:15 – preparing our bootstrap (for later on)
6:25 – Reviewing the class we want to unit test
10:25 – writing our first iteration of the Zend_Cache
13:22 – front options and back options
15:00 – looking at what Zend_Cache is caching
18:25 – Moving caching into the bootstrap

Using Google Maps with Zend_GData

jon — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:29:38 +0000

This episode will wrap up the google docs series. You can start with Part 1 and Part 2, or jump straight into this one. With our persistence layer (the Google Docs Spreadsheet) and unit tests around geo-targetting addresses completed, we’ll tackle the view and try and visualize our data using the Google Maps API. This video will also touch on Zend_View, Zend_Controller, Zend_Registry and bootstrapping with Zend_Config. All of this wouldn’t be possible without Zend_GData. Download the source code, browse it online and don’t be shy to ask questions in the forum.

Synopsis

review of current unit tests
1:30 – review of the google docs spreadsheet
3:30 – creating an API key
5:00 – grabbing spreadsheet data
8:30 – embedding google maps
12:00 – embedding one marker
23:00 – writing the javascript plotting code
30:30 – moving configuration data into the application.ini file

Custom Action Helpers for Firebug

jon — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:40:51 +0000

I’d like to introduce Tawfek’s sequel to his video covering Debugging in Firebug with the Zend Framework. If you’re looking for a tutorial on how to write a custom Action Helper, or wishing to make your ajax development more robust with logging and profiling, then these 33 minutes will save you a pile of googling. Download the source code or browse it online. Have a question? We’ll do our best to answer it in the forums (no registration currently required!)

topics covered

Review of firebug
2:00: writing a custom Action Helper
5:30: configuring the Zend Bootstrap
10:00: Testing the Action Helper Through Firebug
12:30: Writing magic methods
16:00: Setting up a JSON-friendly view
18:00: Integrating Zend_Db
26:00: Implementing jQuery
29:00: Console Logging with Firebug and jQuery

Geotargetting with the Google Maps API

jon — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 05:55:10 +0000

This video will is part of a multi-part series on looking at how we can leverage some of Google’s API’s to build a fancy mapping tool that’s driven from a Google Docs Spreadsheet. If you haven’t worked with Google Docs or Zend_Gdata before, I suggest you take a look at the video introducing Zend_Gdata and the Google -Zend libraries. This video looks at how we can build our own very simple web service adapter for Google’s geocoding service. As with most zendcasts, I invite you to download the source code, browse it online and discuss the video in the forums.

Debugging Zend Projects with Firebug

jon — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:34:41 +0000

Tawfek is back! This is part 1 of a two part series where Tawfek will be taking us through how Firebug and the Zend Framework can work together to provide non-intrusive debugging and accurate profiling information for an application. This is a great feature that every Zend Developer should know about. Browse or download the source code. Discuss in the Forums.

Introduction to the Google Docs API

jon — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:06:55 +0000

This video is going to be first in a small series looking at how we can integrate a small handful of the many Google APIs into a Zend Application. We’ll look at using a google docs spreadsheet as a data store and have it talk to your zend application through a small collection of unit tests. In following videos, we’ll start using the maps API for geocoding and finally plotting people to places using the Google Maps embeddeble map. Browse the source code or download the project. Discuss this video on the forum.

Summer Lovin’

jon — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:08:42 +0000

Hi everyone! Over the last 6 months, I’ve had the pleasure of putting together over 30 videos about the Zend Framework for your enjoyment. I’d like to thank you all for subscribing! Special thanks are in order for those who’ve gone out of their way to chip in! As you may know, Zendcasts is a viewer supported endeavor, which relies on feedback on the site as well as individual donations.

You might have noticed a couple weeks of experimenting with an advertising model on the site, and frankly I couldn’t stand the ads myself and would rather keep the content and experience as pure as possible. In an attempt to keep those ads far away, if you’ve found this site helpful, please consider making a donation!

I’ll be back at the beginning of August with a new set of videos on working with Google Maps, Google Docs, Zend_Auth, Doctrine and much more!

Stay tuned and have a great summer,

Jon Lebensold

Zend Acl with Authentication and Reflection

jon — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:18:59 +0000

This video tutorial is going to look at how we can build a simple authentication mechanism with Zend_Acl with complete unit test coverage. I wouldn’t say that this is entirely the Zend way of doing things since we’re not using Zend_Auth, however it would be relatively trivial to create a Zend_Auth Adapter for each of the lookup objects that we’re going to write. Lately I’ve been trying to stay disciplined about how I’m writing unit tests and so I figure this should translate into what I’m teaching. I inadvertently covered using reflection in a refactoring job. When you browse the source code, you’ll see that there’s even more potential for refactoring outside the video with the application of an interface.

Getting Started with the Zend Framework and WAMP Server

jon — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:38:05 +0000

This Father’s day, zendcasts is doing 2 videos back to back! There’s been a bit of talk in the comments about how to setup the Zend Framework on Windows. Thankfully, Tawfek Daghistani took some initiative and put together this short piece on setting up WAMP Server with Zend.

For a first time doing a screencast, it’s pretty solid! The text is a bit hard to read, but luckily you can follow along with the source code. If you want all his files, just grab the zipped version.

Thanks Tawfek!

Like the video? Support Zendcasts:

Introducing Zend_Acl

jon — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:22:52 +0000

There’s been a lot of talk on Twitter about doing some videos about Zend_Acl, so by popular demand, here’s part 1 of a 2 part series about Zend_Acl.

I’m going to do this with the unit testing framework we setup in the last video tutorial so that I can focus on the meat of Zend_Acl and its power.

If you don’t have unit testing setup locally, feel free to grab the source here, or a zipped version of the project.

Unit Testing with the Zend Framework with Zend_Test and PHPUnit

jon — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:37:32 +0000

I have to preface this video by saying that I’m still a bit of a novice when it comes to unit testing (especially in Zend). Also, I feel that I wouldn’t be able to take credit for the whole implementation.

Here are some great resources on unit testing in the Zend Framework to beef up your knowledge.

The trouble with these is that they’re mostly pre-1.8. I’ve taken the approach of using a command line instead of the IDE since this way it doesn’t matter if you’re using Zend Studio for Eclipse.

What’s covered:

Using phpunit with MAMP
Unit Testing Models
Generating Code Coverage Reports
Unit Testing Controllers

Don’t forget to grab the source code or browse it on google code.

Zend_Navigation – creating a menu, a sitemap and breadcrumbs

jon — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:56:12 +0000

This tutorial covers a lot of the basic use cases with Zend_Navigation. Using a uri-based navigation.xml file, we generate a very simple menu system as well as a breadcrumb with some basic information. In the last 3 minutes I cover how to get a Google compliant sitemap from the navigation.xml file. This video is by no means exhaustive, but should get you up and running with Zend_Navigation in the Zend Framework.

Browse the code off google code or download a zip here.

On another note, I’m thinking of putting together a forum as a way of organizing some of the informative discussion I’ve found in the comments section. I know other forums exist so I’d be curious to know if you think zendcasts would benefit from such a thing.

Alternatively, if you have topics you’d like covered and are willing to step up to the mic, I’d love to share your own screencasts with the now over 550 subscribers!

Introduction to Zend 1.8: A look at Zend_Tool and Bootstrapping

jon — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:55:43 +0000

Zendcasts has now moved to 1.8.2! This video covers setting up a Zend Framework perspective in Zend Studio for Eclipse as a well as using Zend_Tool to get a project structure up and running. The second half of the video covers setting up Zend_Layout and a typical Zend MVC structure. Source code is available on Google Code or downloadable here. Enjoy!

Many to Many with Zend_Form and Zend_Db

jon — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:29:15 +0000

This is part 2 in a series on many to many with Zend_Form and Zend_Db. I suggest starting with last week’s video on Zend_Db and many-to-many in order to follow the configuration of our models. Grab the code and follow along! This concludes this series on Zend_Db. I’ve also uploaded a zipped version of the code if that’s easier than Google Code.

Many to Many with Zend_Db and Zend_Form

jon — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:30:25 +0000

Exposing many-to-many in a practical application took a little more time and effort than I had anticipated. With that in mind, I to use this opportunity to explore how Zend_Form, Zend_Controller and Zend_Db could be integrated. This is the first in a two part set looking at our data model.

By the end of the second video, you should have a project that explores the following concepts with Zend_Db:

A user has many tasks (many-to-many)
A task has many users (many-to-many)
A user has one contact type (one-to-many)
A contact type has many users (many-to-one)

Unfortunately, this only gets through setting up the database, CRUD with Tasks and setting up the Many-to-Many classes in Zend_Db. The next video will cover how we can write a Zend_Form that will map the associations between the users and tasks. Enjoy!

If you can’t wait till the next video, grab the code on google code and play with it firsthand.

One to Many with Zend_Db

jon — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:27:24 +0000

This is part 3 in the Zend_Db series. I’m only scratching the surface with what you can do with Zend_Db_Table classes, however starting is often the hardest part. I’ve posted the code once again on the Google code for this episode, so please don’t be shy and grab a copy.

There’s a lot of discussion over where and how I’m using the model in the comments, and I have a feeling that as I keep doing this, some of my controversial design decisions (whether out of ignorance, which I’ll gladly acknowledge, or professional experience) might start to surface. I’m really hoping to do a series of similar videos with Doctrine, since I find their solution to database persistence really elegant. If anyone has any suggestions, or would like access to the Google code, I would love to open up the discussion and find the “best practices” here. Personally, I would start by moving our custom made form to Zend_Form and adding some much needed validation to the project.

Lastly, I need to apologize for the delay, this week has been quite full due to work and personal commitments. I’m going to keep the video a week schedule as best I can. The video also deals with setting up the MySQL database, if this isn’t interesting, skip to the 12 minute mark.

Zend_Db Update and Delete

jon — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:08:35 +0000

This is the second in a series exploring Zend_Db_Table. We finish up the project in the last video by adding Update and Delete functionality to our UserService. Grab the source code and follow along.

Zend_Db Insert and Read

jon — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:45:49 +0000

This video is the first in a series on Zend_Db. I start with a looking at insert and read using the Zend_Db_Table classes with a bit of Zend_Db_Select thrown in at the end. Next week will be a followup with update and delete with the help of a custom route, some view partials and a few more additions to our service layer. I’m not a fan of putting business logic in the same object as a class belonging to the Table Data Gateway pattern, so I’ve created a custom UserService object to help seperate the view and model layers. This would also be in keeping if you had multiple service layers (for example, a database, a couple RSS feeds and a couple of web services) and wanted to keep their business logic and querying outside of the Controller. I don’t bother with Zend_Form since it’s configuration heavy and only really interesting in conjunction with validators, however it would fit in perfectly as an extension to this project. The code can be downloaded for this and next weeks episode to help you follow along.

Integrating Bits on the Run into Zend

jon — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:05:05 +0000

This video covers a web service that I’ve been using lately called Bits on the Run. The service has fantastic support (with even the famous JW from the JW Player offering assistance if needed) and good documentation. If you want to build a web 2.0 app with video and aren’t interested in managing the encoding of multiple formats, BotR is for you.

I look at searching and getting detailed information from the bits on the run web service. If you’re planning on using Bits on the Run for live video uploads, I would encourage using the flash uploader on their downloads page.

Instead of JSON, the web service is XML based, so there’s some references to using SimpleXML as well.
If you took the time to look at the last video on web services, this will all be pretty familiar, except that instead of working with a web service that I’ve created, I’ll take advantage of a commercial web service. If you’re planning on integrating video into your web application and find this video helpful, please consider following this affiliate link as a way of supporting zendcasts.
This video wraps up a series on RESTful web services. I’ll be moving onto Zend_Db and then Doctrine integration in the following weeks.

If all the jumping around is getting to you, grab the source code from google code and follow along.

Writing a REST Web Service and Client With Zend_Controller

jon — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:46:45 +0000

so here’s my makeup video for last week’s absence. It’s a little on the long end (nearing 40 mintues), however in my defense, I’m trying to cover a lot of ground. The video covers how you can build a very basic JSON web service with some private key authentication. I think that I muddled through the description, so I invite you to look at the Wikipedia entry on private / public key cryptography.

I start by producing a simple Business Object for countries, which then becomes a web service. With some credentials for authentication stored in Zend_Config_Ini, I go through the motions of writing a wrapper around Zend_HttpClient for handling requests with our home-grown country list web service. This approach was adapted from a web service I’ve been working on for a client recently, that I’ve found light and easy to write for RESTful calls. Following along with the source code might also be helpful. Grab yourself a copy of the source code here.

Using SVN with a Zend Studio Project

jon — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:23:34 +0000

The folks at Zend were kind enough to offer me a license for Zend Studio and since I’m a fan of where the project is going, I’m excited about using it here. The advantage here is that I can cover some things like Unit Testing in a consistent manner in the videos to come. That’s not to say that NetBeans can’t do unit testing, or synchronization with SVN, but the configuration and environment isn’t as tailored to Zend Development.

You can grab a 60 day trial of Zend Studio from Zend. This video covers setting up SVN with Zend Studio, however I’m not going to make a habit of covering Zend-Studio specific features. That’s why I’m posting another video later today about web services with a little more meat that isn’t development environment specific.

No Podcast this week

jon — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:17:04 +0000

Unfortunately, I’ve been out of the country consulting for the last week. I’ll be putting out two episodes the following week to make up for the missing episode. Please stay tuned!

Zend_Config_Ini and using Zend_Http_Client with Twitter

jon — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:14:31 +0000

This podcast is a two-parter: Zend_Config_Ini and Zend_Http_Client(). While the two classes aren’t married together in the video, anyone serious about writing an API to their web application will need to access the API differently in development, staging and production environments.

We also take 10 minutes and 4 lines of code to work with the Twitter API. Jump to around the 15 minute mark if you’re already up to speed on Zend_Config_*.

I’m trying to cover the basic classes required to write a web service in the video next week. I’ve gotten a couple emails about covering Zend_Db. Since this podcast has covered Zend_Controller_* and Zend_View_* classes, the Zend_Db_* are starting to appear as the odd class out. I’m hoping to introduce Zend_Db by mid April.

View / download the source on Google Code

Zend View Partials

jon — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:43:44 +0000

This screencast covers Zend View Partials, an often overlooked portion of the Zend_View_* collection of classes, however, I’ve found them super handy when writing complex templates. Running time is a little under 10 minutes.

Download the project code.

Zend View Helpers with AJAX

jon — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:19:17 +0000

This is the second part of last weeks tutorial. Here we add some JQuery code and look at how Zend_View_Helper_* classes can be written in such a way that they behave the same when they’re invoked on the server and called asynchronously via an AJAX request.

Feel free to follow along by downloading the project code.

Introducing Zend View Helpers

jon — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:42:07 +0000

This video covers how to setup and user Zend View Helpers. I also cover how state is managed within the class. Next week I’ll show you how you can use this technique with a bit of AJAX to make those View Helpers shine! I’ll post the project code for both videos with part 2.

Making JSON Objects from Zend_Controllers (Using JQuery)

jon — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:47:25 +0000

I started this video thinking it would be short and it ended up close to 30 minutes. If you find these videos too long, please let me know and I’ll break them up.

In my own defense, this video covers a lot of ground. I introduce JQuery and immediately put it to work for sending and receiving JSON requests to our Zend_Controller. The JSON is automatically generated from a set of PHP classes in a PHP array, thanks to Zend_Json.

also, download the project file for this episode.

Zend_Form Introduction, Part 2

jon — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:56:52 +0000

This video is part 2 of my introduction to Zend_Form. These last two videos have been a bit long since Zend_Form has a lot of behavior.

I’ve also included the source code for this video. Hopefully this will help you follow along.

download the source here, I haven’t included the Zend Framework itself, but I imagine you can grab a copy off of the Zend website.

Zend_Form Introduction, part 1

jon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:27:16 +0000

This screencast ran a little long, and unfortunately I’ll have to post the rest next week. We start with creating a DTO (Data Transfer Object) that will house our data as we pass it from the Controller, to the form and then back to the view. Zend_Form is used for validation and rendering.

enjoy!

Managing Session with Zend_Session_Namespace

jon — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:19:20 +0000

This video covers the Zend_Session_Namespace class. It’s a short introduction to how we can use this object to simplify passing data from Zend_Controller action to another during a user’s stay on our web application.

Creating custom Zend_Controller routes

jon — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:45:38 +0000

A look at how you can create custom routes and pass parts of your query string into a Zend_Controller as a named parameter.

Using Blueprint CSS with Zend

jon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:51:31 +0000

This video looks at the HeadLink view helper and how blueprint can easily be integrated into an existing zend_layout.

Adding an XHTML Strict Doctype and CSS File the Zend Way

jon — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:38:47 +0000

Using zend_layout, a CSS file and doctype will be set through some helpful tools provided in the Zend Framework.

Creating Zend_Controllers

jon — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:00:03 +0000

The last video in a series showing how to setup the Zend Framework from scratch. This video goes through the steps required to create a Zend_Controller for handling error reporting as well as creating the main IndexController. Zend_Layout is also briefly mentioned as part of the MVC setup.

Make an index file for a Zend Framework project

jon — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 14:10:53 +0000

This video covers the code found in the Zend Quickstart guide for creating the bootstrap file. I create the index.php file which will handle all the browser requests to the Zend Framework.

Writing a bootstrap file

jon — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 14:20:49 +0000

Setting up a bootstrap.php file as part of a Zend Framework MVC structure. I also cover the preliminary steps in setting up a Zend Framework project in NetBeans. This video is part 3 of a series of short videos going through the steps required to setup a Zend Framework project from scratch.

Zend Framework MVC Folders

jon — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:26:47 +0000

Setup a Zend Framework folder structure in under 5 minutes.

Zendcasts Technology Overview

jon — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:43:49 +0000

The first Zendcasts video. Getting MAMP ready for a Zend Framework installation on a local machine.