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The Rumors Are True: I Am Rebuilding SonghaySystem.com on the Zend Framework

My previous, technically-suspect post “Scott Guthrie and the Zend Framework” back in February may suggest that I am now running directly into spending two weeks rebuilding SonghaySystem.com on top of the Zend Framework.

It is true folks. I am rebuilding SonghaySystem.com on top of the Zend Framework and it will take about two weeks of “spare” time.

For the handful of very special people in my life who are waiting for my other (more artistic) projects to (finally) appear, this ‘Zend thing’ may seem like a compulsive detour, sucking yet more life out my creativity (this detour, by the way, stalls my Adobe Flex work). For me, building on top of Zend framework is like setting up a retirement fund for one of my children. So I understand how this can look like overkill for more Bohemian types.

Here are some notable blurbs about this sleep-depriving experience that should be expanded on later:

  • The Zend Framework introduced to me, in force, the PEAR Coding Standards.
  • The phpDocumentor support in Eclipse Europa WTP came to the fore. Code folding in the Eclipse PHP editor sucks—Microsoft is utterly superior here.
  • The Zend Framework by design replaces 99% percent of the reasons why I need to write Apache rewrite rules in my .htaccess file(s). This by design is freaking awesome.
  • The Zend Framework introduced to me the practice of storing 99% of PHP code outside of the web root. This caused me to build a WebBaseConfiguration class of static helpers (for ‘meta’ bootstrapping) and design something I call configuration ‘chaining.’
  • Like this guy “steve” who wrote “Frustration with Zend Controller Action Helpers,” I lost about nine hours trying to understand how Action Helpers work. View Helpers, on the other hand, came very quickly largely because of better documentation and, by ‘dumping’ Zend_Controller_Front with print_r, one can see that View Helper paths are set up by default.
  • After the Action Helper thing got going, the concept of controller ViewFragment came to me. This is a base class that contains ‘generic’ calls to the database to mix data with XHTML markup. Other Action Helpers can subclass ViewFragment to produce more page-specific markup.I can’t wait until I am done. I am sick of this falling-in-love-with-even-more-code shit!

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