Customer Reviews

Beginning Zend Framework (Expert's Voice in Open Source)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The code in this book flat out doesn't work. The forum that is supposed to support the book is moribund -- the author is missing in action. He's actually closed it down through the front door because of the unhappy comments, although it's still reachable at [...]

The whole book is based upon building a Web App which is promised to be run at [...] There's nothing there. In October 2009, I wrote on the message board. The author said that he'd get the site up "shortly". It's now January 2010 and nothing. Why do you think it's hard to deploy an application which has already been built and tested for a book? My guess -- from trying to work through the code samples myself -- is that it's so buggy, that it's unusable.

My experience with this book is so poor that I'm going to be very skeptical about future purchases from Apress.

Give this book a pass.

I am a developer with over 25 years programming experience.

There is so much WRONG with this book!

1) Since you're working with Zend Framework, you'd think the author would suggest you download and install Zend Server CE, a free Community Edition which includes apache, PHP and Frameworks and which installs and configures itself. He doesn't. Instead he suggests you download each separately and configure them manually. (Be Careful! One wrong move and your server will not work!) He also suggests you populate extra copies of the Framework into each project, wasting lots of storage.

2) It's outdated. For example: in the installation of MySQL, the author talks about installing the depreciated GUI tools rather than the workbench.

3) It is FILLED with numerous erroneous references to things not previously covered. The technical review on this book seems to be practically non existent.

4) The author walks you through a coding technique only to show you a better way to do it. You will find yourself typing code that was never meant to be in the final project. Watch Out! Many of examples have subtle syntax errors that will have you pulling out your hair!

5) And lastely, his "cutzie" writing style gets in the way of learning. It's difficult to follow as the text rambles onto this "bunny trail" and that.

Instead download a copy of Rob Allen's "Getting Started with Zend Framework". In 18 pages, Rob takes you through a simple project that covers the basics of Framework with concise, correct examples that work. Then take a look at his book, "Zend Framework in Action".

I enjoyed reading Beginning Zend Framework, and I was able to work through the examples and get fairly comfortable with the framework. I had purchased a few different books, but I found that I was getting stuck at some point throughout the book and wasn't sure how to get going with it. So, this was the book that got me up and running. There are some mixed reviews on here and I can say working with the framework can be tricky and configuration on different platforms for this can be difficult. I would recommend that you use an IDE such as PHP Eclipse and MYSQL Workbench so you can spot syntax issues and correct them. Also, it's important to have the framework documentation on hand to refer to in case something doesn't work as expected. I ran into a few issues and narrowed them down using debugging, isolating the problem then checking on google and the framework docs for solutions. Not too different to what you can expect to be doing in real life I imagine.

For setup the Zend Server can be a good choice, but I've been able to do a manual install of all components on Windows after some effort. Stay positive and stick with it, trust me, you will get up and running as I did - good luck!

A little background: I'm an experienced PHP developer who has been actively working with it since 2000. I've used other frameworks, and am quite comfortable with oop, mvc, and many of the design patterns used by zend.

This book was AWFUL. So many of the examples just did not work. The author seems to miss the mark with the framework in general, and really leaves you wondering if he was qualified to write this book at all...

The Zend Framework is a pretty complex framework. For a novice, you'll probably have some learning curve. The thing I like a lot about this book is how simple the author explains things. I can understand for some intermediate to advance users that this book maybe a little light since it does not delve into more advance stuff like form decorators but you have to take "beginning" part here. I appreciate the "introductionest" of the book that gives you insight with what you can do with the framework and show you sneak peak of its power so after learning this intro stuff you can then read more advance book and browse the official Zend Framework doc with a little more confidence.

The support forum for this book is filled with spam and the source download does not seem to work correctly with the current Zend framework. The writing style is approachable and I felt like I was making progress, but the ends do not seem to meet in the middle.

How could possible Apress let this one out? I didn't expect too much from "Beginning" serious, even I had very good experience of "Ivor Horton's Beginning Java 2, JDK 5 Edition" in the past, but this one is just a joke. Like a last year college project. Very disjointed!

There a few things that I would change, such as the long redundant examples that seems like they are mainly there just to make the book longer. But overall the book is well written and easy to read

This is a book that takes you by the hand and leads you without real obstacles to a good understanding of the Zend Framework.
The writer has good didactical skills and knows how to level with those who still have to learn from the beginning this rather complicated 'thing'.
Never had I the feeling that he goes too fast, becomes too abstract or looses the overal.
Being a teacher myself I would highly recommend this book for it's self-study possibilities to anybody who knows about php, a bit of OOP and want to learn the Zend framework in a pleasant and useful way (the examples are very practical) from the very beginning. (written by Dutchman, so English probably not perfect).

This is my first review but I think this is the appropriate time to create one. The reason I say that is how well this book is written and how well it accomplishes what the author intended, which is an introduction to Zend Framework that is relevant and easy to understand.

I have spent the better part of a frustrating month+ trying to learn it on my own through blogs and online tutorials. The tutorials were either too simple or too advanced and usually obsolete. This book however is extremely easy to understand and more importantly helps you understand Zend Framework and why it is so useful.

The only minor (extremely minor) problem I found is that the code examples aren't formatted the best. Meaning if there is a minor change to the code it isn't highlighted instead you have to search for it (this may be the author's intent - not sure).

I will also add to this that the author does an excellent job at showing you the different ways the same thing can be accomplished, allowing you to determine which works best for you.