Zend Framework: A Beginner’s Guide Vikram Vaswani New York Chicago San Francisco Lisbon London Madrid Mexico City Milan New Delhi San Juan Seoul Singapore Sydney Toronto Copyright © 2010 by The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-163940-8 MHID: 0-07-163940-3 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-163939-2, MHID: 0-07-163939-X. All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefi t of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. 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About the Author Vikram Vaswani is the founder and CEO of Melonfire (http:// www.melonfire.com/), a consultancy firm with special expertise in open-source tools and technologies. He has 12 years of experience working with PHP and MySQL as a Web application developer and product manager, and has created and deployed a variety of PHP applications for corporate intranets, high-traffic Internet Web sites, and mission-critical thin-client applications. Vikram is also a passionate proponent of the open-source movement and is a regular contributor of articles and tutorials on PHP, MySQL, XML, and related tools to the community through his regular columns on the Zend Developer Zone and IBM DeveloperWorks. He is the author of Zend Technologies’ well-regarded PHP 101 series for PHP beginners, and his previous books include MySQL: The Complete Reference (http://www.mysql-tcr.com/), How to Do Everything with PHP & MySQL (http://www .everythingphpmysql.com/), PHP Programming Solutions (http://www.php-programming- solutions.com/), and PHP: A Beginner’s Guide (http://www.php-beginners-guide.com/). A Felix Scholar at the University of Oxford, England, Vikram combines his interest in Web application development with various other activities. When not dreaming up plans for world domination, he amuses himself by reading crime fiction, watching movies, playing squash, blogging, and keeping a wary eye out for Agent Smith. Read more about him and Zend Framework: A Beginner’s Guide at http://www.zf-beginners-guide.com. About the Technical Editor Ryan Mauger is the Lead Developer for Lupimedia (http://www.lupimedia.com/), a multimedia design agency in Somerset, England that specializes in bespoke content management systems for design-oriented Web sites. Ryan is a keen Zend Framework supporter and contributor, and can often be found answering questions and guiding people on IRC (#channel). When not evangelizing the Zend Framework, Ryan is a proud father, and enjoys escaping to the lakes for a spot of fly fishing. Read more about him and his work at http:// www.rmauger.co.uk/. Contents FOREWORD ......................................................................... xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................... xiv INTRODUCTION .................................................................. xv 1 Introducing the Zend Framework ................................................................. 1 Overview ........................................................................................................................3 Features .......................................................................................................................... 4 Standards Compliance and Best Practices ............................................................ 4 Reusability ............................................................................................................ 4 Internationalization ............................................................................................... 5 Open Source .......................................................................................................... 5 Community Support .............................................................................................. 5 Unique Advantages ......................................................................................................... 5 Loose Coupling ..................................................................................................... 5 Rapid Release Cycle ............................................................................................. 6 Unit Testing Policy ............................................................................................... 6 Code-Generation Tools ......................................................................................... 6 Market Credibility ................................................................................................ 6 Third-Party Application Interoperability .............................................................. 6 Commercial Support Options ............................................................................... 7 Extensive Documentation ..................................................................................... 7 Application Environment ............................................................................................... 7 Installing the Zend Framework ...................................................................................... 8 Try This 1-1: Starting a New Project ............................................................................. 10 Understand Application Requirements ................................................................. 11 Create the Application Directory .......................................................................... 11 Create the Application Skeleton ........................................................................... 11 Add Zend Framework Libraries ........................................................................... 13 Define Virtual Host Settings ................................................................................. 13 Using the Command-Line Tool ...................................................................................... 14 Summary ........................................................................................................................ 17 2 Working with Models, Views, Controllers, and Routes ............................... 19 Understanding Basic Concepts ....................................................................................... 20 Models .................................................................................................................