Table of Contents

Since Zend Framework: A Beginner's Guide is aimed at users new to the Zend Framework, the first half of the book starts out by explaining basic concepts and solving fairly easy problems. Once you've gained familiarity with the basics of Zend Framework development, the second half of the book brings up more complex problems, such as internationalization and performance optimization, and illustrates possible solutions. This also means that you should read the chapters in order, since each chapter develops knowledge that you will need in subsequent chapters.

Here's a quick preview of what each chapter in Zend Framework: A Beginner's Guide contains:

Chapter 1, Introducing the Zend Framework introduces the Zend Framework, explaining the benefits of framework-based development and walking you through the process of creating a new Zend Framework project.

Chapter 2, Working with Models, Views, and Controllers discusses the basics of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern and introduces you to important concepts like routing, global layouts, and modules.

Chapter 3, Working with Forms introduces the Zend_Form component, explaining how to programmatically create and validate Web forms, protect forms from attack, and control form error messages.

Chapter 4, Working with Models discusses the role of models in a Zend Framework application and introduces the Doctrine ORM toolkit and the Zend Framework bootstrapper.

Chapter 5, Handling CRUD Operations discusses how to integrate Doctrine models with Zend Framework controllers to implement the four common CRUD operations, add authentication to an application, and build a simple login/logout system.

Chapter 6, Indexing, Searching, and Formatting Data discusses data indexing and searching, and also demonstrates how to add support for multiple output types to a Zend Framework application.

Chapter 7, Paging, Sorting, and Uploading Data discusses how to paginate and sort database query results; filter and process file uploads; and read and write configuration files in INI and XML formats.

Chapter 8, Logging and Debugging Exceptions explains how the Zend Framework handles application-level exceptions and demonstrates how to add exception logging and filtering to a Zend Framework application.

Chapter 9, Understanding Application Localization discusses the various tools available in the Zend Framework to build a localized, multi-lingual application that can be easily ported to different countries and regions.

Chapter 10, Working with News Feeds and Web Services discusses how to use the Zend Framework to generate and read Atom or RSS news feeds; access third-party Web services using SOAP or REST; and allow developers to access your application using REST.

Chapter 11, Working with User Interface Elements discusses how to improve site navigation with menus, breadcrumbs and sitemaps, and also explains the Zend Framework's Dojo integration with examples of an AJAX-enabled autocomplete form field and a pop-up calendar widget.

Chapter 12, Optimizing Performance discusses various techniques for measuring and improving Web application performance, including benchmarking, stress testing, code profiling, caching, and query optimization.

Appendix A, Installing and Configuring Required Software guides you through the process of installing and configuring an Apache/PHP/MySQL development environment on Windows and Linux.

Special Features

Try This Each chapter contains at least one self-contained, hands-on example that is relevant to the topic under discussed and that the reader can use to gain a practical understanding of the material.

Ask the Expert Each chapter contains one or two Ask the Expert sections that provide expert guidance and information on questions that might arise about the material presented in the chapter.