Building ZF3 composed pages using Nesting View Models and Forward Controller Plugin

Normally in ZF3 MVC projects, each controller action matches one view and use it to render its output.

Occasionally, we may want to build your ZF3 pages by dispatching various controllers from within the matched controller and merging outputs into a unique final view. In this way we can aggregate one or more views to create complex pages like report summaries or widget dashboards.

How to inject Zend Service Manager in ZF3 Controllers

Zend Service Manager component is Zend Framework’s implementation of service locator pattern. This object is very usefull component for an application and is largely used in ZF applications.

How to setup a Translate Controller Plugin in Zend Framework 3

Sometimes in our Zend Framework 3 multi-language application, we could need to access to Zend Translator component directly from Controllers. For example, when we have to translate a string to return in a JsonModel.

Update Twitter Bootstrap to release 3 in Zend Framework 2

Recently I started a new project based on Zend Framework 2, using Twitter Bootstrap as CSS framework. Some days ago, new Bootstrap v3 was released and introduced a lot of changes and improvements. Because of ZF2 Skeleton Application comes out-of-box with Twitter Bootstap 2, I decided to setup the new project skeleton and update CSS framework to latest available release.

PHP jobs with Gearman and Supervisor

The problem

Often in a PHP project there could be operations that need to be executed asynchronously. Some example are: processing mail queues, indexing data, computation that requires long elaboration time.

Processi PHP con Gearman e Supervisor

Problema

Spesso in un progetto PHP capita di dover eseguire operazioni in modo asincrono. Alcuni esempi sono: lavorazione di code email, indicizzazione di dati, calcoli che richiedono lunghi tempi di elaborazione.

Zend Framework 3.0 branch started!

Yesterday, Evan Coury, Zend Framework contibutor, announced start of Zend Framework branch.

Development goals will be merged between ZF team ideas and community suggestions that will be collected in this topic. Anyway, Evan immediatly specifies that development will be focused on avoid dramatic migration as was for transition from ZF1 to ZF2.

Configurare filtri Doctrine 2 in Zend Framework 2

Scenario

Un filtro di Doctrine è uno strumento molto potente che può essere utilizzato per aggiungere condizioni a livello SQL all’interno del nostro gestore di oggetti Doctrine 2. Ciò significa che i filtri influenzeranno il comportamento di query DQL, collezioni, recupero dati, ecc.

Setup Doctrine 2 filters in Zend Framework 2

Scenario

Doctrine filter is a very powerfull tool that can be used to add conditional clauses at SQL level into our Doctrine 2 engine. This means that filters constraints will affect DQL queries, collections, lazy loading, etc.

ReCaptcha in Zend Framework 2 without Zend/Form

The problem

Captcha is a very useful mechanism to avoid automated abuse of your sites and applications. In particular,reCAPTCHA is a Google powered service that offers a free and simple way to implement a captcha protection field in your forms or pages. Zend Framework 2 implements his own components to handle captcha and a specific one to handle reCAPTCHA service. At the moment, the ZF2 documentation is very usefull if you want to integrate a reCAPTCHA in your Zend/Form component, but lacks in describing how to use reCAPTCHA service component alone. Actually Zend/Form is very powerful, but sometimes a developer need to use standard html to implement his own forms and this prevents to use ReCaptcha as Zend/Form element.

Working with DateTime in Doctrine 2 and Zend Framework 2

The problem

Storing datetimes can be a issue if servers and users of your application are distributed around the World and use different time zones. Each user want to work on datetimes in his specific time zone, servers automatically stores values in their time zone, etc. Storing data without operating right conversion will cause strange behaviours.

Switch to mobile, tablet, or other layout in Zend Framework 1.11

The problem

We want to implement a method to completely switch layout of our Zend Framework application without loosing flexibility. The solution must give us the possibility of switching all layouts and  the views of the controllers we want.