Zend Framework Articles

PHP is one of the most widely used languages on the Web today. Yet despite that fact there is no "P" in AJAX (define), Zend co-founder Andi Gutmans believes that PHP could be the glue that makes AJAX work better.

I posted this rather lengthy argument in the Zend fw-core mailing list after I learned that the Zend_Filter_Input component had been dropped from the Zend Framework. I have used this component extensively in various projects, and had written up a contribution to the Zend DevZone that described using a bootstrap script to block direct access by your developers to the superglobal user input arrays ($_GET, $_POST, $_COOKIE, etc).

I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the Zend Framework. When it was first announced, I feared that it was going to be a framework highly geared towards enterprise development with tie-ins to a bunch of other Zend tools like the Zend Platform or either of the Zend Core things (Oracle or DB2/Cloudscape). What IÂ’ve heard since has relieved a bunch of that fear, and given me some hope about its development and the future of PHP. Their main goal, as many have now reported, is that of extreme simplicity. Unfortunately for those developing any software product, making it extremely simple is not an extremely simple thing - itÂ’s normally an extremely difficult thing. Trying to create an application that will be easy to install, easy to deploy, and easy to use is a very difficult thing. Especially when you have to do it quickly, you have a lot of people ready to pounce on you when you make mistakes, and the thing youÂ’re trying to make extremely simple isnÂ’t a trivial problem.

Good news - the Zend Framework License is now compatible with the GPL. This means you can use the ZF for your own GPL-licensed PHP project.

As we embrace the changes that 2006 will bring to the PHP community, I can but only wonder about what is to become of PHP 5. Talk and debate over PHP 6 is already a hot topic, and despite being in a stable release for over 2 years PHP 5 has failed to see any significant kind of adoption rates, lingering at an astonishingly low 4.2%. Will PHP 5 be the version that everyone 'skipped', or could the Zend Framework be its saviour?