Book Review: Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development

If you are looking into buying a book to learn about Zend Framework, chances are you are already set on using Zend Framework to build your next project. Today, we will be looking at Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development by Keith Pope, published by Packt Publishing.

First of all, you’ll notice that this book is based on Zend Framework version 1.8, and as of writing this review, the latest stable release of Zend Framework is 1.9.4. This is not an issue, because 1.9, even though it brings new features such as PHP 5.3 compatibility and RESTful web services, does not change its structure or any part of the system that might have impact on your learning.

Flow of the Book

The flow of this book is heavily inspired by the famous Ruby on Rails book, Agile Web Development with Rails, where the author invites you to join the process of building a demo application, which in both cases is a shopping cart system. Judging by the feedback of the Rails book, most people feel quite comfortable learning a framework this way, some don’t. I guess if you are not a fan of following a defined learning structure, this book probably isn’t for you.

Short but Sweet

It is a relatively short book, with only around 350 pages. As a result, this book expects you to be comfortable with working with PHP 5 and have a solid grasp of Object-Oriented Programming. If you aren’t already familiar with PHP, or PHP 5′s OOP features, I highly recommend you to polish up the said skills.

MVC Still Rules

The first two chapters of the book focus on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern. As the author mentions at the start of the book, Zend Framework is a loosely coupled framework; it does not enforce the MVC principle. However, given the popularity of MVC within the web development community, it is definitely worth while to learn how to write an application in MVC. Chapter one explains the basics of MVC whilst chapter two explains the request/route/dispatcher/response family. These two chapters will set up the foundation nicely for you and get you to understand the basic structure of a Zend Framework powered MVC application.

Adventure of the Store-Front App

Chapter three to nine contain the actual ‘adventure’ where you as the reader will be riding along with the author on the journey of creating a store-front/shopping-cart application. During the process, the author tells you not only what to do, but also why to do them. A good example is the ‘fat controller skinny model’ vs ‘skinny controller vs fat model’ comparison, the book illustrates each and tells you why you should stick with the latter.

Chapter ten wraps up the store-front application with some more common tasks such as bootstrapping modules and sharing common application elements.

Code Optimization, Caching and Testing

Chapter eleven touches on a very practical topic: code optimization and caching. This is especially beneficial if you’re to run a large volume web application or if you have limited hardware resources. Pay special attention to the Zend_Cache section as the author tells you how to integrate it effectively in your application in order to achieve the best result.

The last chapter, chapter twelve, introduces you to Zend_Test, a testing framework that utilizes PHPUnit.

Verdict

To wrap the review up, I think this is an excellent book on Zend Framework provided you:

• already have a good understanding of PHP;
• already have a good understanding of OOP;
• can follow the rather forceful learning flow;
• know how to learn with initiative (e.g. do your own research!).

This book sits well in the market, as it aims primarily at web professionals who most likely are already experienced with PHP and perhaps some other PHP frameworks, and don’t have time to read books with 1000′s of pages.

You may purchase this book via Packt Publishing’s website.

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