Richards Blog PHP, food and life

First of let me be straight forward right now, I am not one for a "magic" Framework because there just isn't a one "Framework" covers all solution.

Frameworks are like swiss army knives. There good to have around, come in very handy but when it comes down to the real dirty work and you need control and power your going to break out the seperate snap-on tools required for the job.

I scanned through the manual and my first thought was other then the View controller this isn't really a framework at all, its just a bunch of modules. You could drop almost everything into seperate pear modules without issue. This is a great thing, If I just want to create a pdf I can just create a pdf without any overhead from a bunch of required framework libraries. This really perked me up, I might never use this as a "Framework" but the "modules" within are looking very usefull.

So, I download to a local webserver, untar and jump to the demo directory and run smack into a couple problems right away.

1. The main Zend directory has very limited permissions had to chmod and chown it right away. This could be due to extremely strict permission settings on the development server for security, but when releasing a package to the public it might be a good idea to use permissions that are more likely to run on a default setup so the average person has a better change of getting it running.

2. Ok that problem solved, browse to Zend/demos/Zend/Pdf/demo.php which I am really intested in, Hmm nothing, check the error logs and it failed to open the Zend/Pdf.php library.

Again when releasing to the public it might be a good idea to ensure your demos run right out of the box.

3. Ok, try to run it again see its a command line script, no problem
php demo.php PDFReference14.pdf temp.pdf
and get hundreds of errors about undefined indexes, Overall though it works, not exactly fast if I had to serve pdfs on a commercial site I would prob stick to a compiled module but still pretty impressive.

If you haven't played with Ruby on Rails yet check out
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html
From start to finish the install is quick, easy and pretty much user stupid, your up and running without having to worry about permissions, placement of directorys and such.

From my understanding Zend Framework was created to "compete" with solutions like this, people making such a big fuss about how easy Ruby on Rails is, how easy it is to use for development, how fast you can get up and running.

If the idea behind Zend Framework is to reduce the "crossing of the fence", to give the php community that "Ruby On Rails" exp that so many seem to think php needs then they are far off from there goal at this time.

So from my very limited look through so far, lots of usefull tools, needs a little more work on delivery to ensure the masses get the warm and fuzzy feeling after they download. I do look forward to seeing more from this framework, and I would love to see some of these ideas get back into pear.

-- Updated --

http://www.achievo.org/blog/archives/29-Quick-Zend-Framework-review.html

He really hits the nail on the head and is right in line with what I am saying but he made me think about it a little bit more.

If they where trying to keep backward compat with php4 the wrappers make sense but in that case I would still wrapper to support php4 and do native methods for php5.

There are a couple great ideas for "improvements" that would be better off as patches to the core, I do hope this is realized and maybe they just feel the improvements are to large for php5 and will end up in php6.

Then there is pear, php has a great "library" manager already, why not use it? Even if for some crazy legal reason you can't commit these to pear directly why not create a pear.zend.com channel or something?

This would allow easy installs, requirement checks. By linking this into a pear channel you would provide one of the EXTREMELY important items, EASY OF INSTALL.

Right now, you want to get Zend Framework up and running? Download, untar, chmod, chown, move directorys around..

Imagine

pear channel-discover zend.php.net
pear install Zend_Framework

This is how simple it NEEDS to be for this Framework to even have any real chance of success compared to the "Ruby on Rails" of the world.