Customer Reviews

Pro Zend Framework CMS (Expert's Voice)

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

 

 

Like many, I bought this book as it is one of the few non-beginner Zend Framework books that comes from a trusted publisher. What I expected was a great next step in advancing my Zend Framework knowledge. What I got was a rushed, almost useless run through of how this particular author created his CMS.

The author spends multiple chapters on the same exact CRUD (create, read, update, delete) functionality in each controller. Very little additional information is given when new features are added.

All in all, the biggest complaint, and the reason this is rated 2 stars as opposed to 4, is you simply can not follow the code in the book. I did a quick run through of my notes after finishing the book and came to the conclusion that 1 in 4 code samples contains at least 1 critical error. From misspellings, to incorrect class names, to missing syntax, to functions that don't exist; You will be spending hours upon hours just trying to figure out why your script isn't working! And to top it off, the publisher has not yet added a single errata (I personally have submitted at least 20).

Another complaint is the sample code is not broken up into chapters, but instead provides only the final product. This is somewhat useless when working through the book systematically. I worry that this added layer of complication and frustration may drive many away from using Zend Framework as a person could easily mistake problems in the sample code with problems of the framework.

To wrap it up, this book was a rushed, weakly thought out attempt at covering the beast that is Zend Framework. I highly recommend you look elsewhere.

I agree with most of the points in Travis Butler's review . I encountered several obvious editing errors in code samples and wasted a lot of time tracking them down. I finally wrote to Apress' editorial staff who admitted "It is possible that some code may have been added or changed at the last minute, bypassing our normal technical review process." This is a shame because I had begun to prefer Apress over Packt books because of a perceived emphasis on higher quality from Apress.

The other issue, as Travis points out, is repetition. After building a few CRUD actions there really isn't any need to to show more basic CRUD code samples later in the book. Instead, discussing subjects covered or alternate approaches in a bit more detail would have been more valuable for readers.

If you need to build your first CMS and are looking for a good example of how to do so with the Zend Framework, I'd recommend this book despite the editing errors. If you're a seasoned developer, I'd look elsewhere.

I enjoyed this book even with the amount of errors I found in the code.

That said, I learned a lot in this book and had a lot of fun with it. For the most part if you have some experience with php and the Zend Framework you should be able to figure out the errors and fix them.

I'll briefly cover what I think is the heart of the book.

This book uses direct inheritance as it is simple and easy to implement versus lets say composition. For example, by using direct inheritance, if you have a Page Model, then you would directly extend from the data source gateway class.

eg. class Model_Page extends Zend_Db_Table_Abstract

The disadvantages of this are it is hard to run unit test without a database connection. Breaks OO inheritance principle (if your concerned about that) and is tightly coupled with Zend_Db_Table.

The author notes that there are a number of different opinions regarding the structure of an MVC application. He states that the approach he describes is a fat controller approach.

But after building the application it seems to me he is using a Fat Model skinny Controller for the business logic in the application stack. The methods and queries are done in the Model not the Controller.

Doing this allows for code reuse anywhere in the application, readability is enhanced and maintainability is easier as the Controller is easier to maintain with fewer lines of code and less logic contained in it.

What I really like about the application you build, is the authors use of an abstract data structure. Abstract data structures look at content in a contrastive way. In an abstract system content is content. To implement this approach he uses the node pattern which consists of two components: pages which are the main containers and the content nodes which are the actual blocks of content. A page can have any number of content nodes.

So what the pattern means is that any page can have any number of content nodes. The same database tables can work for a page, a blog, a cms, or any type of page. Also, pages can contain other pages.

The Model_Page and Model_ContentNode classes you build handle the low-level database management and this is where the direct inheritance takes place from Zend_Db_Table_Abstract.

The Page and ContentNode model classes provide an abstraction layer between the application and the underlying database structure. But this has added difficulty because you create a flexible data structure and this has made managing the data more complicated than it would be if you had a fixed table tailored for each content type. Like in a traditional CMS database.

The way around this involves creating another layer of abstraction on top of the models called "content item objects".

These objects extend a base abstract class called CMS_Content_Item_Abstract that handles all the interaction with the Page and ContentNode models. This in turn gives you a real object oriented data access.

So, now that I have this base content item class, I can create new forms of content for my CMS project very easily, without altering the underlying model or database. You can than create a concrete class that extends the abstract class and add public properties for each of your data.

I liked this approach and would be interested to hear what other people think.

The idea behind this book was great, however it falls short of the mark due to the number of errors. Such a large percentage of the code contains errors that a reader could spend hours just trying to figure out how to get the examples to work. The errors range from minor things like missing semicolons at the end of some code statements, to using nonexistent methods, models, and variables.

Given the number of errors I have a hard time believing that the tech editors gave the manuscript more than a passing glance. There's absolutely no way that anyone tested the published code prior to releasing this book because none of it will work as-is.

I gave the book three stars only because the author is obviously knowledgeable and made a good attempt at delivering what was intended. I think the editors and publisher rushed this title to printing without due diligence and let the author down. After reading a couple of Apress's books this seems to be a trend.

Prior to buying the book go to the publisher's website and review the errata. Only about half of the problems I found are listed there. I submitted many which are not yet posted.

The book is great in the sense it describes every aspect of day-to-day working with Zend Framework. It won't enable you to get a Zend Framework Certification, but it does a great job explaining the workings of 90% of the Framework's parts, how to have them work together and also speaks about why they should be used together.
Follow the book and if you're a good learner and practice the tasks described in the book you'll be able to use the Zend Framework to build any CMS and/or classic website in no time, as well as integrate various stuff in your work.
However, the book stands somewhere between programmer and user. It doesn't describe many key concepts while the writing and structure tries to appeal to those that don't have good programming concepts, who don't know OOP, the MVC pattern (this is briefly addressed though) and so on.
Without knowing decent PHP and fairly good OOP, you'll be missing the core of the book, which is a shame.
Also, the book doesn't address a lot of particular cases, for example: say you're building a webservice and you need to suppress output, how do you convice a view to do that? And even if you prevent a view's output, how do you prevent a controller form rendering a template anyway, since the template wraps the view inside and still renders?
In a nutshell, the book is ok, but it better not be the only book in your PHP library.

I have been searching for an adequate book to teach the basics of the Zend Framework. I was looking for something beyond the many introductory tutorials already available on the internet. This book covered my need in only about three days of reading. The author effectively uses a CMS project as a vehicle to explain the capabilities of the framework in a simple way. This is not an advanced text, but if you want to learn to make a working prototype of a web application using the Zend Framework this book provides the necessary foundation.

I have looked closely at the few other Zend Framework books, and this book does not contain the glaring errors and weaknesses of those books.

My only criticism of this book is the "Pro" techniques title. I think they are introductory techniques. Since no other book has provided the introductory techniques in a compelling and effective way, I recommend it for that reason. I look forward to an advanced Zend Framework book in the future.

Very thorough and accurate overview of the Zend Framework, helped me grasp MVC as it should be done in PHP. The author did a really excellent job of demonstrating the different modules that are available in the Zend framework, along with very practical and modern uses for them such as displaying navigation, a search feature, caching queries, security, form building, i18n - I've gotta say this is the best overall book for a framework I've read since the great Pylons Book ( for Python ) by James Gardner.

I would recommend this over 'Beginning Zend Framework'. Every book has a few errors in the code examples, the ones in this book were minimal but I documented a few of them at [...] if that helps anyone out, as there isn't any errata on the Apress page for this book yet.

Do not buy this book. It is filled with coding errors, and I could not get past the third chapter. I can't understand why the author could not try the code before he commits it to print. Also, the code that is available for download only covers the final state, and code is not given for individual chapters like most software instruction texts offer.

The book is good but i think that the title does not fit the content. I buy the book especially for the "Pro" word, and it just covers all the beginners topics.

I have seen a number of complaints about the book and the code. But I am surprised that I managed to cruise through all the way to Chp 10 - close to the end of the book; I have literally followed every example in the chapter and created the sample codes, by each chapter, and they all work fine.

I use Apache running in Windows XP, and Zend framework version 10. There are minor fixes required. Of course, the errata page helps too.

To be honest, Zend framework is not for the faint-hearted. You need to know some PHP to begin with. Any beginner's guide to Zend framework actually assumes you are at least an intermediate user.

This is by far the most useful book on Zend I have worked on.