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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What I love about this kind of book is that it’s great for reading while offline and can get you some good insight with a different mindset (I like to read my dev books cover to cover at first and then apply what’s in them… not sitting in front of my computer forces me to totally focus on the book).
What I hate about this kind of book is that by the time it hits the store shelves it’s already outdated (as of now zend framework is in version 1.9). Most of the time this isn’t very important, but when a major update occurs lots of the book’s contents can be deprecated…
Anyway, thanks for the review :)
“What I hate about this kind of book is that by the time it hits the store shelves it’s already outdated”
Exactly.
Second post..
Can you show us how to use the framework?
fourth post….seriously people stop doing this.
The book shows you how to use the framework :P
thanks for the reviews.
I absolutly love this kind of books. I learnt Codeigniter just by reading one of them.
Hi,
Thx for the review, just to note that the book is good up until 2.0, the features introduced in 1.8 marked a fairly important milestone in ZF’s development, hence why we chose that title :)
Also keep an eye on my blog, as I plan to write about new features there as they are developed, and cover the bits I didn’t get chance to include in the book.
I bought the book but didn’t had time to read… With this review i’m optimistic about my purchase… Regards.
farklı ama güzel bir yazı olmuş
I’ve been using CodeIgniter but have been thinking about moving to a more enterprise targeted framework like Zend.
Also there is Symfony. It’s hard to decide. Maybe I’ll pick up this book.
Have you checked Kohana 3 framework ?
There are very good screencasts covering the zend framework at
http://www.zendcasts.com, so any one who is interested in learning may check them out.
I’m looking for a ZF book, which should contain Dojo Tookit and Flex. Can you suggest one?
Thanks!
All three are very different technologies. Sounds like you need three books.
Thank you for this review, I just received my copy yesterday and I’ll start it as soon as I finish “Guide to Enterprise PHP Development” (great book by the way).
Dont see the pioint in shelling out for a book which is out of date (ok wont be much diff between 1.8 and 1.9) and probably even more so after refactoring in v2 of ZF. I have emailed Jeff a few times asking if he wishes ZF tuts but there seems to never bee the demmand for them. In the meantime I would head over to http://www.zendcasts.com for some really good screencasts on using ZF.
The zend framework evolves quickly, is impossible to have an entire book with the up to date version. Rejecting a book only for the vendor version is a bit of close-minded.
The real value value of this book is how the author elaborates about the implementation of a model design with the framework, what design patterns are used on the framework itself that can be used to your advantage implementing your project.
The zend framework is more like for big enterprise projects but if you wrap your head around it, working with other frameworks is a breeze.
You missed the point of it being refractored in v2 of ZF whcih judging by the release rate of ZF wont be too far off.
Like you say, if the reader is not familiar with PHP OOP, it is not of much use. If the reader is a code freak and already knows a lot about OOP, I guess the manual is sufficient. The book is for someone in the middle.
I recently wrote a review of the book – http://techchorus.net/zend-framework-18-web-application-development-book-review