Zend Framework: Surviving The Deep End, Chapter 3 – The Model Available

Ah do you happen to have a good implementation technique for Zend Framework and PHPIDS ?

Cheers,

Steve

Hi, Is there any way to subscribe to the comments in the book?

I made you a donation via paypal…..this book…this project is amazing

Second that!

Hi Pádraic,

First of all, I’d like to thank you for the great work you’ve done. I’ve always found your articles very interesting and its with your help I got a good start on Zend Framework which I’ve now used in a dozen of projects – thank you.

I have one question or plea for you. When it comes to PHP I’m pretty much self-thought through the past 10 years and though I was slightly familiar with the MVC concept it wasn’t until ZF I got to work with it. I’m glad that you’ve released the chapter regarding the model, since that’s the one which puzzles me the most. I’ve googled all around for various articles regarding the use of models in Zend Framework applications. The point where I’m not really sure if I’m doing things the right way, is when my model isn’t directly a Zend_Db_Table (or whatever it’s called). What if I just have a model which contains functions to fetch various data, manipulate it and pass it on to the controller without directly extending from any Zend_* class? What I’ve done to utilize models in my application is to extend Zend_Action_Controller and implement a function of mine called fetchModel. I then let my modules’ controllers extend from that instead. All the fetchModel function does is take the name of the model and then combines it with the current module to know where to look for the file. It then includes it to be utilized. I would really like some feedback about this – some practical examples on how to use models in Zend Framework applications would really be nice

Hope that made sense, english isn’t really my first language

Thanks again,
Christian Rasmussen, Denmark.

I’ve gotten a peek at the book and I’ve read your articles for a while now… so first of all thank you for all the great content you’ve provided!

Now, am I the only one who has had trouble connecting to http://www.survivethedeepend.com/ ???? I get a network timeout error most of the time, and I haven’t been able to reach it for days (from home or work)

Dont get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for yourve work, but you released the entire blog series faster then the updates on the book. We have waited forever for the next step AFTER the blog series.

The book is a more deliberate effort – any idea how long it takes to plan a book, write draft chapters, organise a release medium that doesn’t completely suck and still find time to go to work each day?

Book chapters will take more time, but they do tend to come in pairs and I’m targeting a forthnightly/weekly release depending on the available time.

Right now, my time is limited (one of the reasons why not all comments here are being answered immediately).

Patience, padawan .

Where do you want general comments or “feature requests” for the book to go?

Do you know yet what sort of application you will be using for demonstration during the book?

Most of what I’ve seen from some ZF books and a bunch of tutorials they all stop too early. They show a fairly trivial interaction of one model/table, a list view, and maybe a simple edit form. They don’t show more complex multi-table interactions that are a little more real world. My guess, which may be wrong, is that the bread & butter for many php developers is database applications.

I’d like to see a some non trivial db interactions, like like an add/edit form that relies on drilling down in data from several other models/tables. An example of that would be a bug tracking application, where you’d need to first select the product, then you need to select the version, then you might need to select the sub-component. You’d be primarily working with the bug model but you’d likely have a number of other tables with the list of products, versions, and sub-components. Showing how to handle those cascading select boxes and wire them together with dojo or other toolkit would be a big help. Also what should the model support look like for that sort of thing? (I’m assuming you’d say embedding too much into the controllers is the wrong way to go.)

I hope that makes some sense, no I’m not expecting the book to teach programming, but there are a lot more details to Zend MVC especially with Ajax then have generally been covered.

In any case, Thank you, we all appreciate your efforts,
–Rob T.

I think what you’re searching for is Matthew’s bugapp example application:
http://github.com/weierophinney/pastebin/tree/bugapp

Take a look at the Gateways BugTracker.php, CommentGateway.php and UserGateway.php within the directory application/modules/spindle/models/

Marcus

Thanks. Yes, Matthew’s example app is very good. I’ve been working through it. His blog posts and the discussions have been very useful. See:

http://weierophinney.net/matthew/

However, my comments were in the context of trying to possibly influence the Surviving the Deep End book and other future ZF books. I, and I’m assuming a number of other developers, will be trying to crank out ZF MVC applications with Dojo integration that need a little more guidance on wiring it all together.