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The registry is a container for storing objects and values in the application space. By storing the value in the registry, the same object is always available throughout your application. This mechanism is an alternative to using global storage.

In this tutorial, a tiny demo application will be constructed to highlight key features of the Zend Framework and demonstrate how its components could be integrated and used together. Although the demo application is not intended for production use, the working application provides a simple skeleton for building Zend Framework applications. Even advanced PHP developers may find some parts of the demo enlightening to see how the Zend Framework might differ from other frameworks in its use and application of design patterns and components providing popular functionality.

I have done my fair amount of hacking PHP applications. In that time, I have come across many poor programming practices that have caused me to almost lose my mind. One that really grinds my gears is overuse of global variables.

I began work this week on my first project utilizing the Zend Framework. The Zend Framework, although still alpha, provides some time-saving features for PHP web application developers. The largest time-saving feature for me so far has been the Zend Controller component, which is the building block for the MVC pattern. Basically, it allows you to create controllers and handlers to process requests. For example, /admin/index gets mapped to the 'index' action of the 'admin' controller. Inside the code, all you have to do is create classes to represent each controller and functions in those classes to process the handlers. Each handler function simply outputs the desired data to the browser. Easy as pie.

This article covers the use of tagging within the Zend_Cache. It gives example code of how to implement Zend_Cache within your code and shows why you need a tag cloud and gives the code to build it.

A small tutorial about setting up the zend framework. Explained as easy as possible, to get you started as quickly as possible, without too much fuss. It's meant for people who are new to the framework.

This tutorial demonstrates how to approach storing Zend_Acl roles and resources in a database instead of creating them in code as shown in most other tutorials.

I'm taking a quick look at adding fields that aren't in the table, but may be handy in your application. Like adding a field "name" that combines both first and last name, without having to change your database or write too much code. Quick, dirty, but extremely handy.

Demonstrates how to use ADODB with Zend_Auth by creating a custom Zend_Auth_Adapter class.

Part two of my ongoing look at the View layer of the Zend Framework turns its attention to the topic of View Helpers. The Zend Framework manual provides a fairly narrow definition of its helpers which indicates they enable complex tasks, like generating form elements, to be extracted out of views into dedicated helpers. Here I'll try to explain in greater depth the View Helper pattern which is another of those patterns in the J2EE catalog, and which adds to the range of tasks View Helpers are capable of performing.