There are two ways of working with Zend Framework as a library in your project. These are including it in your project repository and using a shared copy on the server (like PEAR). Let us discuss both: (more…)

For some reason, I just had the most horrible time making sure that my connection from my Zend Framework code was speaking UTF8 at my database. Here are the key things to remember that I learned: (more…)

Zend Framework has a few hooks with the Firebug browser plugin (with the FirePHP add-on). The two that I use are writing logs to the console and profiling of database connections. (more…)

Through reading a few blog posts over the last year and my own trial and error, I’ve developed a way of using the flashMessenger Helper in ZF that works out really well for me. (Note: if anyone knows the original blog post that I got some of the view helper from, please comment!). (more…)

One of the steps to install PHPUnit is to execute the following pear commands: pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de pear install phpunit/PHPUnit (more…)

Google Charts has a QR code generation service (here are the details). I decided that I wanted to create my own ZF View Helper to display these on my pages. This version that I am going to show just returns the properly formatted URL for the charts API. The view must create the img tag around it. (more…)

I will be presenting at the WAIMM Email Marketing Software meetup today. I plan to cover the basics of Mailchimp for comparison to other services like Constant Contact. (more…)

Running a test, I ran into this error: Zend_Session_Exception: Session must be started before any output has been sent to the browser; output started in /usr/share/php/PHPUnit/Util/Printer.php/173 (more…)

Today I was reviewing some old code I wrote in Zend Framework. One of the things I was doing in the Bootstrap.php file was creating an function called _initViewSettings(). In here I set a bunch of values for the xhtml version, the css files to include, etc. Now I realize my mistake: (more…)

Theme systems are very common in projects written on Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress. I didn’t see much out of the box support for themes in Zend Framework at first. However, I was wrong. It’s pretty easy. The only real decision I had to make is if I want to make themes that extend a default theme - or themes that are simple and on their own / totally encapsulated. I will do the encapsulated version... (more…)