Zend Screencasts: Video Tutorials about the Zend PHP Framework (iphone)

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.

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!

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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.

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:

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

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!

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!

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.