Using Zend Framework 2

Learn how to create modern web applications with PHP and Zend
Framework 2
Oleg Krivtsov
This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/using-zend-framework-2
This version was published on 2013-12-27

This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing
process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools
and many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build
traction once you do.
2013 Oleg Krivtsov

Tweet This Book!

Please help Oleg Krivtsov by spreading the word about this book on Twitter!
The suggested hashtag for this book is #using-zf2-book.
Find out what other people are saying about the book by clicking on this link to search for this
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Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . .
About this Leanpub Book .
Your Feedback . . . . . . .
Subject of this Book . . . .
Audience of this Book . . .
Structure of the Book . . .
Examples and Source Code
Acknowledgments . . . . .

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i
i
ii
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ii
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iii
iv

1 Introduction to Zend Framework 2 . .

1.1 What is Zend Framework 2? . . . .
1.2 License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 Release Schedule . . . . . . . . . .
1.4 Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.5 User Support . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.6 Supported Operating Systems . . .
1.7 Server Requirements . . . . . . . .
1.8 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.9 Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.10 Design Patterns . . . . . . . . . . .
1.11 Components . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.12 Differences with Zend Framework 1
1.13 Competing Frameworks . . . . . .
1.14 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1
1
2
3
4
4
6
6
7
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9
12
13
16

2 Zend Skeleton Application . . . . . . . . .

2.1 Getting Zend Skeleton Application . . .
2.2 Typical Directory Structure . . . . . . .
2.3 Installing Dependencies with Composer
2.4 Apache Virtual Host . . . . . . . . . .
2.5 Opening the Web Site in Your Browser
2.6 Creating NetBeans Project . . . . . . .

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18
18
19
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23
25
26

3 Web Site Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3.1 PHP Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

29
29

4 Model-View-Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.1 Get the Hello World Example from GitHub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32
32

CONTENTS

4.2

Separating Business Logic from Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

32

Preface
About this Leanpub Book
This book is currently a work in progress. Thanks to Leanpub, you have a chance to obtain this
book at a lower cost and give your feedback to the author. This makes it possible for the author
to immediately correct mistakes and enhance the places in text that you point to, thus creating
a high-quality product.
For your patience, you will receive all newer versions of this book for free as they appear, and
the final version as soon as this book is complete.
The following table gives you some summary regarding this books current status:
Current Status of This Book

Book complete
Book version
Last updated

about 60%
0.5.1
Oct 28, 2013

Here is a recent working history to give you a feel for the authors writing speed:
Recent Change History

Date

Version

Description

2013/10/28
2013/10/12

0.5.2
0.5.1

Writing Chapter 7 Collecting Input with Forms.

Proof-read Chapter 6 and Appendix C.

2013/09/29

0.5

Completed Chapter 6 Page Appearance and Layout and Appendix C

Introduction to Twitter Bootstrap.

2013/09/08

0.4.1

Fixed some detected mistakes. Proof-read Chapter 5. Writing

Chapter 6.

2013/08/26

0.4

Completed Chapter 5 URL Routing and Appendix B.

2013/07/30

0.3

Completed Chapter 3 Web Site Operation and Chapter 4

Model-View-Controller.

2013/06/30

0.2

Completed Chapter 2 Zend Skeleton Application and

Appendix A.

2013/06/17

0.1

Completed Preface and Chapter 1 Introduction to Zend Framework 2

2013/06/08
https://leanpub.com

Created this book on Leanpub

Preface

ii

Your Feedback
Thank you for reading this book and helping to make it better. You are encouraged to point out
errors, make suggestions and critical remarks. You can write the author a message through the
dedicated Google Group. Your feedback is highly appreciated.

Subject of this Book

This book is about programming web-sites with Zend Framework 2. Zend Framework 2 is a
modern PHP web development framework intended for building professionally looking, scalable
and secure web-sites, which are easy to test and maintain. The framework utilizes the best
practices and common design patterns, inspired by the evolution of web development industry.
This includes Model-View-Controller pattern, allowing to organize the code in a consistent and
standard way, making it easier to implement automatic code testing.
This book is not only about Zend Framework 2, but also about closely related libraries. Although
Zend Framework 2 has dedicated component for accessing the database, in this book we use
third-party library called Doctrine ORM a de-facto standard object-oriented way to perform
database management. We also describe Doctrine-provided database migrations allowing to
apply changes to the database in a standard way. In the sample applications we will create
in chapters of this book, Twitter Bootstrap CSS Framework is used, allowing to produce nice
looking visual appearance and layout of HTML elements on the web pages.

Audience of this Book

This book is intended for web developers involved in the development of sites in PHP. The author
strives to give material starting with simple things that a beginner should understand. Advanced
things go last in a chapter. You do not need to be a guru in design patterns to understand most
of the stuff.
To read and understand this book, you need to have a basic knowledge of PHP language. A good
point for learning PHP is its official web site and the online documentation. It would be good
if you have some idea of what is HTTP request, GET and POST variables, namespaces, classes
and interfaces.
Because PHP is closely related to other web technologies, it is also recommended that you have
some basic experience in the following:
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) used for creating web pages that can be displayed
in a web browser.
CSS (Cascade Style Sheets) used for defining the look and feel of a web page, like font
size or background color.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/using-zend-framework-2-book
http://php.net/
http://php.net/docs.php

Preface

iii

JavaScript a client-side scripting language used for making a web page more interactive.
For learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript, a good starting point is W3Schools Tutorials.

Structure of the Book

This book is divided by chapters. A chapter is dedicated to a single topic. For example, Chapter 1
Introduction to Zend Framework 2 is intended to make you familiar with fundamental concepts
and main components of the framework; Chapter 2 Zend Skeleton Application is dedicated to
giving you instructions to install the skeleton application, which can be used for creation of your
own web sites, and so on.

Examples and Source Code

This books text is illustrated with code samples. Each sample is a complete web-site you can
install and run yourself to see Zend Framework 2 in action. You can even use the samples as a
base for your own web sites.
All the source code is stored on GitHub code hosting. The code is publicly available, and you
can download the entire code archive by visiting this page. To download the archive, click the
Download ZIP button that can be found on the page (see the figure below).
http://www.w3schools.com/
https://github.com/olegkrivtsov/using-zend-framework-2-book

iv

Preface

Samples can be downloaded from GitHub

The structure of the code archive is presented below.

using-zend-framework-2-book
blog
helloworld
formdemo
...

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Edu Torres, a 2D artist from Spain, for making the cover and an illustration for this
book. Also thanks to Moriancumer Richard Uy for helping the author to find and fix the mistakes
in the text.

1 Introduction to Zend Framework 2

In this chapter well learn about Zend Framework 2, its main principles and components. Well
also compare Zend Framework 2 with other PHP frameworks.

1.1 What is Zend Framework 2?

PHP is a popular web-site development language. However, it has been proven that writing websites in pure PHP is difficult. If you write a web application in PHP, you have to organize your
code in some way, collect and validate user input, implement support of user access control,
manage database, perform scheduled mail delivery, test your code and so on. As your site grows
in size, it becomes more and more difficult to develop the code in such manner. Moreover, when
you switch to the development of a new site, you will notice that a large portion of the code you
have already written for the old site can be used again with small modifications. This code can
be separated in a library. This is how frameworks appeared.
A framework is some kind of a library, a piece of software (also written in PHP) providing
web developers with code base and consistent standardized ways of creating web applications.
Imagine that your web-site is a house, then PHP language is its foundation, and the framework
is the basement. The basement contains a lot of building blocks (components) and tools prepared
for you to make it easier to build the upper floors of your house (see figure 1.1).
Zend Framework 2 is a free and open-source PHP framework. It was developed by Zend, which
is also known as the vendor of the PHP language itself. The first version (Zend Framework 1)
was released in 2007 and since then it has become obsolete. Zend Framework 2 (or shortly ZF2)
is the second version of this software, and it was released in September 2012. At the moment of
writing this book, Zend Framework 2.2 is out.
Zend Framework 2 provides you with the following capabilities:
Develop your web site much faster than when you write it in pure PHP. ZF2 provides
many components that can be used as a code base for creating your site.
Easier cooperation with other members of your site building team. Model-View-Controller
pattern used by ZF2 allows to separate business logics and presentation layer of your web
site, making its structure consistent and maintainable.
Scale your web site with the concept of modules. ZF2 uses the term module, allowing to
separate decoupled site parts, thus allowing to reuse models, views, controllers and assets
of your web-site in other works.
Accessing database in an object-oriented way. Instead of directly interacting with the
database using SQL queries, you can use Doctrine Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) to
manage the structure and relationships between your data. With Doctrine you map your
database table to a PHP class (also called an entity class) and a row from that table is
mapped to an instance of that class. Doctrine allows to abstract of database type and make
code easier to understand.

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

Write secure web sites with ZF2-provided components like form input filters and validators, HTML output escapers and cryptography algorithms, human check (Captcha) and
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) form elements.

Figure 1.1. Zend Framework sits on top of PHP and contains reusable components for building your web site

1.2 License
Zend Framework 2 is licensed under BSD-like license, allowing you to use it in both commercial
and free applications. You can even modify the library code and release it under another name.
The only thing you cannot do is to remove the copyright notice from the code. If you use Zend
Framework 2, it is also recommended that you mention about it in your sites documentation or
on About page.
Below, the Zend Framework 2 license text is presented. As you can see, it is rather short.

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

Copyright (c) 2005-2013, Zend Technologies USA, Inc.

All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
distribution.
* Neither the name of Zend Technologies USA, Inc. nor the names of
its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written
permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR
CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.3 Release Schedule

ZF developers are known to release new versions rather frequently. This allows for security bugs
to be fixed quickly, thus allowing your sites to remain stable and secure. Release schedule for
recent versions of ZF2 is shown in the table 1.1:

http://framework.zend.com/blog

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

Table 1.1. ZF2 Release History

Date

Version

June 12, 2013

May 15, 2013
May 10, 2013
May 6, 2013
May 1, 2013
April 17, 2013
April 17, 2013
March 14, 2013
February 21, 2013
February 20, 2013
February 06, 2013
January 30, 2012
January 30, 2012
December 19, 2012
November 25, 2012
November 20, 2012
October 17, 2012
September 21, 2012
September 20, 2012
September 05, 2013

ZF 2.2.1
ZF 2.2.0 Stable
ZF 2.2.0rc3
ZF 2.2.0rc2
ZF 2.2.0rc1
ZF 2.1.5
ZF 2.1.5
ZF 2.1.4
ZF 2.1.3
ZF 2.1.2
ZF 2.1.1
ZF 2.1.0 Stable
ZF 2.0.7
ZF 2.0.6
ZF 2.0.5
ZF 2.0.4
ZF 2.0.3
ZF 2.0.2
ZF 2.0.1
ZF 2.0.0 Stable

1.4 Distributions
You can download the source code of Zend Framework 2 from the official site (presented in
figure 1.2) to become familiar with its structure and components.
ZF2 can be downloaded in two types: full and minimum. A full-size archive contains a complete
set of components plus demos; its size is about 3 Mb. Mimimum-size distribution contains library
components only, and its size is 3 Mb (also !).
In most cases you wont need to download the code of Zend Framework 2 manually.
Instead, you will install it with Composer dependency manager. We will become
familiar with Composer later in Chapter 2.

1.5 User Support

Support is an important thing to consider when deciding whether to use the framework as
the base for your web site or not. Support includes well written documentation, webinars,
community forums and (optionally) commercial support services, like trainings and certification
programs.
http://framework.zend.com/

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

Figure 1.2. Zend Framework official project web site

Documentation. Documentation for ZF2 is located by this address. It includes beginners tutorial,
programmers manual, and API reference (API stands for Application Programming Interface).
Community Forums. Zend Framework 2 has dedicated user groups all over the world. The list of
groups can be found on this page.
Webinars are video tutorials covering various ZF2 features. Complete list of webinars can be
http://framework.zend.com/learn/
http://framework.zend.com/participate/user-groups

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

found by this link. Among webinar topics, there are:

Zend Framework 2 Patterns. Tells about whats new in ZF2 compared to the first version
of the framework. It also shows how namespaces, class autoloading, and exceptions are
used in ZF2.
Getting started with ZF2. Teaches you the basics of developing ZF2-based applications, like
creating controllers and views, manipulating services and listening to events.
The MVC architecture of ZF2. Teaches the MVC (Model View Controller) architecture of
Zend Framework 2.
Training Classes with live instructors can be accessed by this link. Here you can learn ZF2 by
doing exercises, mini-projects and developing real code.
Certification Program. Allows you to become a Zend Certified Engineer (ZCE), thus making it
easier to improve your skills as an architect and to find a job in a competitive PHP job market.

1.6 Supported Operating Systems

As any PHP web-site, ZF2-based web application can work on a Windows server, on a Linux
server and on any other operating systems PHP can run in. For instance, for creating samples
for this book, the author used Ubuntu Linux operating system.
If you do not know yet what OS to use for your web development, it is recommended for you to
use Linux, because most server software operates on Linux servers. You can refer to Appendix
A for some instructions on configuring your development environment.

1.7 Server Requirements

Zend Framework 2 requires that your server has PHP version 5.3.3 (or later) installed. Note that
this is a rather strict requirement. Not all cheap shared hostings and not all private servers have
such a modern PHP version.
Moreover, the recommended way of installing ZF2 (and other components your app depends on)
is using Composer. This forces the need of shell access (SSH) to be able to execute Composer
command-line tool. Some shared hostings provide FTP access only, so you wont be able to install
a ZF2-based web app on such servers the usual way.
What do I do if I dont have shell access to server?
If your hosting allows you to upload files through FTP protocol, you can prepare all
files on your local machine and then upload the files to the server as an archive.
http://www.zend.com/en/resources/webinars/framework
http://www.zend.com/en/services/training/course-catalog/zend-framework-2
http://getcomposer.org/

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

ZF2 utilizes URL rewriting extension for redirecting web-users to entry script of your site
(you have to enable Apaches mod_rewrite module.) You may also need to install some PHP
extensions, like memory caching extension, to improve ZF2 performance. This can be a difficulty
when using a shared hosting and requires that you have admin rights on your server.
So, if you are planning to use ZF2 on a shared web hosting, think twice. The best server to install
ZF2 on is a server with the latest version of PHP and with shell access to be able to execute
Composer, install PHP extensions and provide an ability to schedule console PHP scripts by
cron.
If your company manages its own server infrastructure and can afford upgrading PHP version to
the latest one, you can install ZF2 on your private server. An acceptable alternative is installing a
ZF2-based web application to a cloud-based hosting service, like Amazon Web Services. Amazon
provides Linux server instances as a part of EC2 service. EC2 is rather cheap, and it provides a
free usage tier letting you try it for free for one year.

1.8 Security
Zend Framework 2 follows the best practices to provide you with a secure code base for your
web sites. ZF2 creators release security bug fixes on a regular basis. You can incorporate those
fixes with a single command through Composer dependency manager.
ZF2 provides many tools allowing to make your web site secure:
Routing allows to define strict rules on how an acceptable page URL should look like. If
a site user enters an invalid URL in a web browsers navigation bar, he is automatically
redirected to an error page.
Access control lists and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) allow to define flexible rules
for granting or denying access to certain resources of your web site. For example, an
anonymous user would have access to your index page only, authenticated users would
have access to their profile page, and the administrator user would have access to site
management panel.
Form validators and filters ensure that no unwanted data is collected through web forms.
Filters, for example, allow to trim strings or strip HTML tags. Validators are used to
check that the data that had been submitted through a form conforms to certain rules.
For example, E-mail validator checks that an E-mail field contains valid E-mail address,
and if not, raises an error forcing the site user to correct the input error.
Captcha and CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) form elements are used for human checks
and hacker attack prevention, respectively.
Escaper component allows to strip unwanted HTML tags from data outputted to site pages.
Cryptography support allows you to store your sensitive data (e.g. credentials) encrypted.
http://aws.amazon.com/
http://aws.amazon.com/free/

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

1.9 Performance
ZF2 creators have claimed to do a great job to improve performance of the ZF2 comparing to the
first version of the framework.
Lazy class autoloading. Classes are loaded once needed. You dont have to write require_once
for each class you want to load. Instead, the framework automatically discovers your classes
using the autoloader feature. Autoloader uses either class map or class naming conventions to
find and load the needed class.
Efficient plugin loading. In ZF2, plugin classes are instantiated only when they really need to.
This is achieved through service manager (the central repository for services of your application).
Support of caching. PHP has several caching extensions (like APC or Memcache) that can be used
to speed-up ZF2-based web sites. Caching saves frequently used data to memory to speed-up data
retrieval. For example, a Zend Framework 2 application consists of many files which require time
for PHP interpreter to process the files each time you open the page in the browser. You can use
APC extension to cache precompiled PHP opcodes to speed up your site. Additionally, you can
use the ZF2s event manager to listen to dispatching events, and cache HTML response data with
Memcache extension.
Are there any benchmark tests of ZF2 performance?
As per the authors knowledge, currently, there are no reliable benchmark tests that
would allow to compare ZF2 performance with performance of other frameworks.

1.10 Design Patterns

Zend Framework 2 creators are big fans of various design patterns. Although you dont have to
understand patterns to read this book, this section is intended to give you an idea of what design
patterns ZF2 is based on.
Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. Model-View-Controller pattern is used in all modern PHP frameworks. In an MVC-application you separate your code into three categories:
models (your business logics go here), views (your presentation goes here) and controllers
(code responsible for interaction with user goes here). This is also called the separation
of concerns. With MVC, you can reuse your components in a different project. It is also
easy to substitute any part of this triad. For example, you can easily replace a view with
another one, without changing your business logics.
Domain Driven Design (DDD) pattern In Zend Framework 2, by convention, you will have
model layer further splitted into entities (classes mapped on database tables), repositories
(classes used to retrieve entities), value objects (model classes not having identity), services
(classes responsible for business logics).
Additionally, you will have forms (classes responsible for collecting user input), view
helpers (reusable plugin classes intended for rendering stuff) and others.

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

Aspect Oriented Design pattern. In ZF2, everything is event-driven. When a site user
requests a page, an event is generated (triggered). A listener (or observer) can catch event
and do something with it. For example, a router service parses the URL and determines
what controller class to call. When the event finally reaches the page renderer, an HTTP
response is generated and the user sees the web page.
Singleton pattern. In ZF2, there is the service manager object which is the centralized
registry of all services available in the application. Each service exists in a single instance
only.
Strategy pattern. While browsing ZF2 documentation or source code, youll encounter the
word strategy for sure. A strategy is just a class encapsulating some algorithm. And you
can use different algorithms based on some condition. For example, the page renderer has
several rendering strategies, making it possible to render web pages differently based on
Accept HTTP header (the renderer can generate an HTML page, a JSON response, an RSS
feed etc.)
Adapter pattern. Adapters allow to adapt a generic class to concrete use case. For example,
Zend\Db component provides access to database in a generic way. Internally, it uses
adapters for each supported database (SQLite, MySQL, PostgreSQL and so on.)
Factory pattern. You can create an instance of a class using the new operator. Or you can
create it with a factory. A factory is just a class encapsulating creation of other objects.
Factories are useful, because they simplify dependency injection - you can provide a
generic factory interface instead of hard-coding the concrete class name. This simplifies
the testing of your model and controller classes.

1.11 Components
ZF2 developers believe that the framework should be a set of decoupled components with
minimum dependencies on each other. This is how ZF2 is organized.
The idea was to let you use some selected ZF2 components alone, even if you write your site with
another framework. This becomes even easier, keeping in mind that each component of ZF2 is
a Composer-installable package, so you can easily install any ZF2-component together with its
dependencies through a single command.
The table 1.2 lists ZF2 components with their brief description:
Table 1.2. Zend Framework 2 Components

Component Name

Description

Core Components
ZendCache

ZendCode

Provides a generic way to cache any data. Caching is used to save

frequently
used data to memory (or another storage media) to speed-up data
retrieval.
Provides facilities to generate arbitrary code using an object oriented
interface. Also includes annotation parsing.

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

10

Table 1.2. Zend Framework 2 Components

Component Name

Description

ZendConsole

Provides an ability to create applications runnable from shell command

line.
Console can be used, for example, for executing scheduled actions, like
mail
delivery.

ZendDi

Dependency injection. Can be used to easily substitute and replace

dependent classes.

ZendEventManager

Allows to send events and register listeners to react to them.

ZendLoader

PHP class discovery and autoloading support. Autoloading is a more

efficient
replacement for require_once.

ZendModuleManager

Zend Framework 2 module manager. In ZF2, every application consists of

modules.

ZendMvc

Support of Model-View-Controller pattern. Separation of business logics

from
presentation.

ZendServiceManager

Service manager. This is the registry of all services available in the

application, making it possible to access services from any point of the
web site.
Miscellaneous utility classes: string utils, array utils, serializable
queues, etc.

ZendStdlib
ZendView

Provides a system of helpers, output filters, and variable escaping.

Used in presentation layer.

Persistence
ZendDom

Provides tools for working with DOM documents and structures. This
includes
querying DOM trees with CSS selectors and XPath.

ZendDb

Provides database access in cross-database style.

ZendJson

Provides convenience methods for serializing native PHP to JSON and

decoding JSON to native PHP. Used for object serialization.

ZendSerializer

Provides an adapter based interface to simply generate storable

representation of PHP types by different facilities, and recover them.

User Management
ZendAuthentication

Provides an API for user authentication. Users are typically authenticated

by providing a username and password which are compared against a
database
table or Apache password file.

ZendPermissions

Access control lists (ACLs) and role-based access control (RBAC).

ZendSession

Manage and preserve session data, a logical complement of cookie data,

across multiple page requests by the same client.

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

11

Table 1.2. Zend Framework 2 Components

Component Name

Description

View Helpers
ZendBarcode

Provides a generic way to generate barcodes. A barcode is a small bar

containing stripes of various width and is optically readable by a machine.
You may have seen barcodes when purchasing goods in a supermarket.

ZendCaptcha

Human input check. Generates a random image ensuring that your

sites user is not a robot.

ZendNavigation

Sitemaps, breadcrumbs and site navigation trees.

ZendPaginator

Breaking large tabular data results into pages.

ZendProgressBar

Component to create and update progress bars in different environments

ZendEscaper

Smart class for escaping text output. Used to secure web site views.

ZendTag

A component suite which provides a facility to work with taggable items.

Testing and Debugging

ZendDebug

A small component containing a debugging utility class.

ZendLog

Component for general purpose logging. Logging site operations is used to

troubleshoot possible errors with your site in development and production
environments.

ZendTest

Base classes for unit testing and test bootstrapping.

Web Forms
ZendFilter

Provides a set of commonly needed data filters, like string trimmer.

ZendForm

Web form data collection, filtering, validation and rendering.

ZendInputFilter

Provides an ability to define form data validation rules.

ZendValidator

Provides a set of commonly needed validators.

Web Services
ZendFeed

Provides functionality for consuming RSS and Atom feeds.

ZendLdap

Provides support for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)

operations including but not limited to binding, searching, and
modifying entries in an LDAP directory.

ZendServer

Client-server generic class interfaces.

ZendSoap

Implementation of Simple Object Transfer Protocol (SOAP).

ZendXmlRpc

Used for creation of web-services utilizing XML Remote Procedure Call

(RPC)
protocol.

ZendHttp

Provides an easy interface for performing Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol

(HTTP) requests.

ZendUri

A component that aids in manipulating and validating Uniform Resource

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

12

Table 1.2. Zend Framework 2 Components

Component Name

Description
Identifiers (URIs).

Mail
ZendMail

Provides generalized functionality to compose and send both text and

MIME-compliant multi-part E-mail messages.

ZendMime

Support class for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME)

messages.

Miscellaneous
ZendConfig

Provides a nested object property based user interface for accessing the
configuration data within application code.

ZendCrypt

Contains implementation of symmetric and asymmetric crypto

algorithms.

ZendFile

PHP class file discovery.

ZendI18n

Support of multi-lingual web sites.

ZendMath

Big integer support and some auxiliary math functionality.

ZendMemory

This class encapsulates memory management operations, when PHP

works in
limited memory mode.

ZendText

Various text utilities like character tables and FIGlets.

ZendVersion

Allows to retrieve the version of Zend Framework.

1.12 Differences with Zend Framework 1

For readers who have an experience in Zend Framework 1, in this section well give some
information on what has changed in Zend Framework 2.
Below, the main technical differences between ZF1 and ZF2 are presented:
Backwards Compatibility. ZF1s architecture passed an evolutional path, preserving backwards compatibility and accumulating many inefficient solutions. ZF2 has been rewritten
from scratch to implement the best features of ZF1 in a more efficient and scalable way.
Because of these breaking changes, ZF2 is not backwards-compatible with ZF1.
ZFTool. In Zend Framework 1, you used ZFTool for creating the application, adding layouts
and controllers. In ZF2, you create your new applications by downloading Zend Skeleton
Application available on GitHub. By the way, in ZF2 you can install a component called
ZFTool, and it can also create the skeleton application or a module for you.
Modules. In Zend Framework 1, your application was monolithic (although there was a
concept of module). In ZF2, everything is a module. The skeleton application has single
Application module by default. Each module may contain configuration, models, views,

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

13

controllers and the assets (e.g. database tables, files etc.). A module can call classes from
other modules. You can install third-party modules and reuse your own modules across
applications.
Aspect Oriented Design. In ZF2, events are used to make it possible to decouple modules.
You can install a module, and it will just work by listening to events occurring in the
application without knowing about other modules. Events include bootstrapping, routing
and dispatching.
Namespaces. In ZF1, you worked with long underscore-separated class names like Zend_Controller_Action. In ZF2, PHP namespaces are used, so instead youll have something
like 'Zend\MVC\Controller\AbstractActionController', which can be easier to type
with auto-completion feature and easier to understand. Namespaces allow to define short
class names (aliases) and use them instead of full names. By convention, namespaces are
mapped to directory structure, making it easier to perform class autoloading.
Configuration. In ZF1, you had an application-level INI config file. In ZF2, each module
has its config file in a form of PHP array. At application level, module configs are finally
merged into a single large nested PHP array.
Service Manager. In ZF1, you had an application registry of classes, which allowed you
to access application services and even put your own class to the registry and use it later.
In ZF2, we have the service manager, which is a more complex version of the registry,
implementing lazy loading and dependency injection. With service manager, you can
register a service class and use it across your modules. For example, Doctrine ORM registers
the entity manager service which you can use to access the database across the module
controllers.

1.13 Competing Frameworks

Zend Framework is not the only web development framework. There are others, like Symfony,
Cake PHP, CodeIgniter and Yii Framework. To estimate the average popularity of these
frameworks in some way, we can use Google Trends site, which allows to track count of a
keyword search queries over time. For example, if you enter Zend Framework, CakePHP, Yii,
CodeIgniter, Symfony into the query field, you will get the graph as shown in figure 1.3.
As you can see from the graph, Zend Framework (blue line) has reached its popularity peak
by 2010, and since then it has slowly lost its popularity. However, ZF is still one of the strong
players on the market. On the other hand, Cake PHP, Symfony, CodeIgniter and Yii framework
are becoming highly popular nowadays.
Lets also look at the relative popularity of ZF1 and ZF2 by typing Zend Framework, Zend
Framework 2 into the search query field. The result is shown in figure 1.4.
http://symfony.com/
http://cakephp.org/
http://ellislab.com/codeigniter
http://www.yiiframework.com/
http://www.google.ru/trends/

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

14

Figure 1.3. Popularity of PHP frameworks. Powered by Google Trends

As we can see, Zend Framework 2 (the red line) was released not so long ago, and has yet to
become popular. The author believes that ZF2 has all the necessary qualities to become popular
over time.

Figure 1.4. Popularity of Zend Framework 2 comparing to the first version. Powered by Google Trends

If you are familiar with one of the above mentioned frameworks, in table 1.3 you can find the
comparison of features provided by those PHP frameworks. Capabilities of Zend Framework 2
are marked with bold.

15

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

Table 1.3. Comparison of Features provided by PHP frameworks

Feature

ZF2

Symfony 2

Cake PHP

CodeIgniter

Yii

Current
version
Distribution
archive size

2.2.1

2.3.1

2.3.6

2.1.3

1.1.13

3 Mb

4.4 Mb

2.0 Mb

2.2 Mb

3.9 Mb

Installation

Composer

Composer

Archive

Archive

Archive

Compatibility
with
shared
hostings

Bad (requires
SSH and
vhosts)

Bad (requires
SSH and
vhosts)

Good

Good

Good

Monolithic or
componentbased?

Components

Components

Components

Components

Monolithic

Prefer
conventions
or configs?

Configuration Configuration

Conventions

Conventions

Conventions

Database
access
pattern

Data Mapper

Active Record

Traditional

Active Record,

or
Active Record

PDO

Yes

Yes

Yes

Any

Any

Blueprint CSS

Smarty/Twig

Any you
want,
or none

None or Prado

Yes (PHPUnit)

Yes (PHPUnit)

Yes (PHPUnit-

Database

Data Mapper

(Doctrine/ORM),(Doctrine/ORM)
Table
Gateway,
Row
Gateway
Yes
(Doctrineprovided)

Yes (Doctrine-

Twitter

Twitter

Bootstrap

Bootstrap

View
Template
Language

Any you
want, or
none at all

Twig

Unit testing

Yes
(PHPUnit)

Yes (PHPUnit)

Yes
(PHPUnit)

Yes (PHPUnit)

Yes

No

Yes (Selenium)

Yes
(Doctrineprovided)

Yes (Doctrine

Yes

No

Yes

migrations
CSS
Framework

support
Functional
testing
Database
fixtures

provided)

(recommended)

based)

bundle)

Summarizing the table above, we can say that:

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

16

Zend Framework 2 can be considered as one of the most mature and established PHP
frameworks on the market. This allows to be sure that ZF2 creators wont stop to update
and support it unexpectedly.
The major way for installing ZF2 is through Composer dependency manager. Symfony 2
is similar to ZF2 in this sence. Other PHP frameworks utilize the conventional installation
from an archive.
ZF2 (as Symfony 2) has bad compatibility with shared hostings because of the Composerbased installation method and strict PHP version requirements. So, if you need to install
your website to a shared hosting, you probably need to contact the hostings support for
installation instructions.
ZF2 provides the sophisticated configuration methods, so you can fine-tune and override
any aspect of its work. Some other PHP frameworks prefer the conventions over
configuration way, making it easier for newbies to start developing websites.
For the presentation layer, ZF2 suggests the use of Twitter Bootstrap CSS Framework by
default. But this does not limit you on using any other CSS frameworks.
In ZF2, you can use several database access methods. And like in most PHP frameworks,
you can benefit from using an object-oriented way of managing the database (with
Doctrine ORM). Additionally, you can use Doctrine migrations mechanism for managing
the database schema in a standardized way.
Comparing to other frameworks, ZF2 provides good capabilities for unit- and functional
testing (based on PHPUnit framework). This makes it possible to automate the testing of
the code you write. For testing the database functionality, you can use Doctrine-provided
fixture mechanism.

1.14 Summary
A PHP framework is a library, giving you the code base and defining consistent ways of creating
web applications. Zend Framework 2 is a modern web development framework created by
the Zend Company, the vendor of PHP language. It provides the developers with outstanding
capabilities for building scalable and secure web sites. ZF2 is licensed under BSD-like license and
can be used for free in both commercial and open-source applications.
ZF2 is updated frequently, making your sites more resistant to vulnerabilities and security holes.
On its official site, ZF2 provides the documentation (tutorials and API reference), webinars,
community forums and commercial support services, like trainings and certification program.
ZF2 creators strive to improve the performance of ZF2 in comparison to the first version of the
framework. Among the features that contribute into the performance of ZF2, there are lazy class
autoloading and support of caching.
On the market, Zend Framework is not the only web development framework. ZF2 is positioned
as a good framework for corporate applications because of its pattern-based design and
scalability. However, you can use ZF2 in any-sized web application with great success.

Introduction to Zend Framework 2

Ive found a mistake in this chapter/have a suggestion. What do I do?

Please contact the author using the dedicated Google Group forum. The author
appreciates your feedback and will be happy to answer you and improve this book.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/using-zend-framework-2-book

17

2 Zend Skeleton Application

Zend Framework 2 provides you with the so called skeleton application to make it easier to
create your new applications from scratch. In this chapter, we will download and install the
skeleton application which can be used as a base for creating your web sites. It is recommended
that you refer to Appendix A before reading this chapter to get your development environment
configured.

2.1 Getting Zend Skeleton Application

The Skeleton Application is a simple ZF2-based application that contains most necessary things
for creating your own simple web site. The skeleton applications code is stored on GitHub code
hosting and can be publicly accessed by this link. To download the source code of the skeleton
application as a ZIP archive, click the Download ZIP button (see the figure 2.1 below).
To download the code archive on a Linux machine without graphical interface, you
can use the wget command, like this:
wget https://github.com/zendframework/ZendSkeletonApplication/archive/master.zip

Unpack the downloaded ZIP archive to some directory. If you are programming in Linux, it is
recommended to unpack it in your home directory:
cp /path/to/downloaded/archive/ ZendSkeletonApplication-master.zip ~
cd ~
unzip ZendSkeletonApplication-master.zip

The commands above will copy the file ZendSkeletonApplication-master.zip archive that
youve downloaded to your home directory, then unpack the archive.
If you are using Windows, you can place the skeleton app directory anywhere in your
system, but ensure that file and directory access rights are sufficient for your web server
to read and write the directory and its files. Actually, if you dont put your files to
C:\Program Files, everything should be OK.
https://github.com/zendframework/ZendSkeletonApplication

Zend Skeleton Application

19

Figure 2.1. Zend Skeleton Applications code is stored on GitHub

2.2 Typical Directory Structure

Every ZF2-based web-site (including the skeleton app) is organized in the same recommended
way. Of course, you can configure your application to use a different directory layout, but this
may make it difficult to support your web-site by other people who are not familiar with such a
directory structure.
Lets have a brief look at the typical directory structure (see figure 2.2):
As you can see, in the top-level directory (we will denote it APP_DIR from now on), there are
several files:
README.md is a text file containing a brief description of the skeleton application;
LICENSE.txt is a text file containing ZF2 license (you had a chance to read it in Chapter 1
of this book);
composer.phar is an executable PHP archive containing the code of Composer dependency
management tool; we will use it later;
composer.json is a JSON configuration file for Composer.

20

Zend Skeleton Application

Figure 2.2. Typical Directory Structure

And we also have several subdirectories:

The config directory contains application-level configuration files.
The data directory contains the data your application might create; it may also contain cache
used to speed-up Zend Framework.
The module directory contains all application modules. Currently there is a single module called
Application. The Application is the main module of your web-site. You can also put other
modules here, if you wish. We will talk about the modules a little bit later.
The vendor directorys purpose is to contain third-party library files, including Zend Framework
2 library files. Currently this directory is almost empty, but we will install all required libraries
later.
The public directory contains data publicly accessible by the web-user. As you can see, webusers will mainly communicate with the index.php, which is also called the entry point of your
web site.
Your web site will have a single entry point, index.php, because this is more secure than
allowing anyone to access all your PHP files.

Inside of the public directory, you can also find .htaccess file. Its main purpose is to define URL
rewriting rules, but you also can use it to define access rules for your web-site. For example, with
.htaccess you can grant access to your web-site from your own IP address only, or use HTTP
authorization to request users for username and password.
The public directory contains several subdirectories also publicly accessible by web-users:
css subdirectory contains all publicly accessible CSS files;
img subdirectory contains publicly accessible images (*.JPG, *.PNG, *.GIF, *.ICO, etc.);

Zend Skeleton Application

21

and js subdirectory stores publicly accessible JavaScript files used by your web-pages.
Typically, files of jQuery library are placed here, but you can put your own JavaScript
files here, too.

What is jQuery library?

jQuery is a JavaScript library which was created to simplify the client-side scripting
of HTML pages. jQuerys selector mechanism allows to easily attach event handlers to
certain HTML elements, making it really simple to make your HTML pages interactive.

Because the Zend Skeleton Application is stored on GitHub, inside of the directory structure,
you can find hidden .gitignore and .gitmodules files. These are GIT version control systems
files. You can ignore them (or even remove them if you do not plan to store your code in a GIT
repository).
Because we will later use the skeleton as the base for our Hello World application, lets rename
the ZendSkeletonApplication-master directory into helloworld, which also sounds shorter. In
Linux, you can do that with the following command:
mv ZendSkeletonApplication-master helloworld

2.3 Installing Dependencies with Composer

When writing a ZF2-based web-site, you are recommended to use Composer for installation
of your applications dependencies. A dependence is some third-party code your app uses. For
example Zend Framework 2 is the dependence for your web-site.
In Composer, any library is called a package. All packages installable by Composer are registered
on Packagist.org site. With Composer, you can identify the packages that your app requires and
have Composer to download and install them automatically.
The dependencies of the skeleton application are declared in APP_DIR/composer.json file (see
below):

http://jquery.com/
http://git-scm.com/
http://getcomposer.org/
https://packagist.org/

Zend Skeleton Application

22

Contents of composer.json file

{
"name": "zendframework/skeleton-application",
"description": "Skeleton Application for ZF2",
"license": "BSD-3-Clause",
"keywords": [
"framework",
"zf2"
],
"homepage": "http://framework.zend.com/",
"require": {
"php": ">=5.3.3",
"zendframework/zendframework": ">2.2.0rc1"
}
}

What is JSON?
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), is a text-based file format used for human-readable
representation of simple structures and nested associative arrays. Although JSON
originates from Java, it is used in PHP and in other languages, because it is convenient
for storing configuration data.

In that file, we see some basic info on the skeleton application (its name, description, license,
keywords and home page). You will typically change this info for your future web-sites. This
information is optional, so you can even safely remove it, if you do not plan to publish your web
application on Packagist catalog.
What is interesting for us now is the require key. The require key contains the dependencies
declarations for our application. We see that we require PHP engine version 5.3.3 or later and
Zend Framework 2.2.0 Release Candidate 1 or later.
The information contained in composer.json file is enough to locate the dependencies, download
and install them into the vendor subdirectory. Lets finally do that by typing the following
commands from your command shell (replace APP_DIR placeholder with your actual directory
name):
cd APP_DIR
php composer.phar self-update
php composer.phar install

The commands above will change your current working directory to APP_DIR, then self-update
the Composer to the latest available version, and then install your dependencies. By the way,

23

Zend Skeleton Application

Composer does not install PHP for you, it just ensures PHP has an appropriate version, and if
not, it will warn you.
If you look inside the vendor subdirectory, you can see that it now contains a lot of files. Zend
Framework 2 files can be found inside the APP_DIR/vendor/zendframework/zendframework/library
directory (figure 2.3). Here you can encounter all the components that we described in Chapter
1 (Authentication, Barcode, etc.)

Figure 2.3. Vendor directory

In some other frameworks, another (conventional) way of dependency installation is

used. You just download the dependency library as an archive, unpack it and put it
somewhere inside of your directory structure (typically, to vendor directory). This
approach was used in Zend Framework 1.

2.4 Apache Virtual Host

Now we are almost ready to get our skeleton web-site live! The last thing we are going to do is
configure an Apache virtual host. A virtual host term means that you can run several web-sites on
the same machine. The virtual sites are differentiated by domain name (like site.mydomain.com
and site2.mydomain.com) or by port number (like localhost and localhost:8080). Virtual hosts
work transparently for site users, that means users have no idea whether the sites are working
on the same machine or on different ones.

Zend Skeleton Application

24

Can I install the web-site to /var/www directory without virtual hosts?

With ZF2-based web sites, it would be more convenient to use Apache virtual hosts
instead of putting the files inside of /var/www. This is because the public subdirectory
needs to be the document root of your site. If you put an entire application in /var/www,
which is the document root by default, you would have to additionally configure the
.htaccess file to forbid access to everything except the public subdirectory. With
virtual host configuration this is a bit easier to do.

Currently, we have the skeleton application inside of home folder. To let Apache know about it,
we need to edit the virtual host file.
Virtual host file may be located at a different path, depending on your
operating system type. For example, in Linux Ubuntu it is located in
/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default file. For OS-specific information
about virtual hosts, please refer to Appendix A.

Lets now edit the default virtual host file to make it look like below:

Virtual host file

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /home/username/helloworld/public
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /home/username/helloworld/public/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
</VirtualHost>

Line 1 of the file makes Apache to listen to all (*) IP addresses on port 80.

Zend Skeleton Application

25

Line 2 defines the web masters E-mail address. If something bad happens to the site, Apache
sends an alert E-mail to this address. You can enter your E-mail here.
Line 4 defines the document root directory (APP_DIR/public). All files and directories under
the document root will be accessible by web-users. You should set this to be the absolute
path to skeleton applications public directory. So, the directories and files inside public (like
index.php, css, js, etc.) will be accessible, while directories and files above public directory
(like config, module, etc.) wont be accessible by web users, which enhances the security of the
web site.
Lines 5-8 define default access rules for directories. These rules are rather strict. The Options
FollowSymLinks directive allows Apache to follow symbolic links (in Linux, a symbolic links is
an analog of a shortcut in Windows). The AllowOverride None directive forbids overriding any
rules using .htaccess files.
Lines 9-14 define rules for the document root directory (APP_DIR/public). These rules override
the default rules mentioned above. For example, the AllowOverride All directive allows to
define any rules in .htaccess files. The Order allow,deny and allow from all control a threepass access control system, effectively allowing everyone to visit the site.
Line 16 defines the path to error.log file, which can be used to troubleshoot possible errors
occurring in your site code. Line 23 defines the logging level to use (the warn means that warnings
and errors will be written to log).
Lines 18-19 are comments and ignored by Apache. You mark comments with the hash (#)
character.
Zend Framework 2 utilizes Apaches URL rewriting module for redirecting web-users
to entry script of your web-site. Please ensure that your web-server has mod_rewrite
module enabled. For instructions on how to enable the module, please refer to Appendix
A.

2.5 Opening the Web Site in Your Browser

To open the web site, type http://localhost in your browsers navigation bar and press Enter.
Figure 2.3 shows the site in action.
On the page that appears, you can see the navigation menu at the top. The navigation bar
currently contains the single link named Home. Under the navigation bar, you can see the
Welcome to Zend Framework 2 caption. Below the caption, you can find some advices for
beginners on how to develop new ZF2-based applications.

26

Zend Skeleton Application

Figure 2.3. Zend Skeleton Application

2.6 Creating NetBeans Project

Now that we have the skeleton application set up and working, we will want to change something
with it in the future. To easily navigate the directory structure, edit files and debug the web site,
the common practice is to use an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). In this book, we
use NetBeans IDE (see Appendix A for more information on how to install NetBeans).
To create NetBeans project for our skeleton application, run NetBeans and open menu File->New
Project. The New Project dialog appears (see figure 2.4).
In the Choose Project page that appears, you should choose PHP project type and in the right
list select Application with Existing Source (because we already have the skeleton applications
code). Then click the Next button to go to the next page (shown in figure 2.5).
In the Name and Location dialog page, you should enter the path to the code (like /home/username/helloworld), the name for the project (for example, helloworld) and specify the version of
PHP your code uses (PHP 5.3 or later). The PHP version is needed for the NetBeans PHP syntax
checker which will scan your PHP code for errors and highlight them. Press the Next button to
go to the next dialog page (shown in figure 2.6).

Zend Skeleton Application

Figure 2.4. Creating NetBeans Project - Choose Project Page

Figure 2.5. Creating NetBeans Project - Name and Location Page

27

Zend Skeleton Application

28

Figure 2.6. Creating NetBeans Project - Choosing Configuration Page

In the Run Configuration page, it is recommended that you specify the way you run the web site
(Local Web Site) and web site URL (http://localhost). Keep the Index File field empty (because
we are using mod_rewrite, the actual path to your index.php file is hidden by Apache). If you
are seeing the warning message like Index File must be specified in order to run or debug project
in command line, just ignore it.
Click the Finish button to create the project. When the helloworld project has been successfully
created, you should see the project window (see the figure 2.7).
In the project window, you can see the menu bar, the tool bar, the Projects pane where your
project files are listed, and, in the right part of the window, you can see the code of the index.php
entry file.
Please refer to Appendix B for more NetBeans usage tips, including launching and interactively
debugging ZF2-based web sites.
Its time for some advanced stuff
Congratulations! Weve done the hard work of installing and running the Zend Skeleton
Application, and now its time to have a rest and read about some advanced things in
the last part of this chapter.

The rest of this chapter is skipped in this free sample.

3 Web Site Operation

In this chapter we will provide some theory on how a typical Zend Framework 2 based
application works. Youll learn how PHP namespaces are used for avoiding name collisions,
what class autoloading is, how to define application configuration parameters and the stages
present in an applications life-cycle. You will also become familiar with such an important ZF2
components as Zend\EventManager, Zend\ModuleManager and Zend\ServiceManager. If instead
of learning the theory, you want to have some practical examples, skip this chapter and refer
directly to Chapter 4.

3.1 PHP Namespaces

When you use classes from different libraries (or even classes from different components of
a single library) in your program, the class names may conflict. This means you can encounter
two classes having the same name, resulting in PHP interpreter error. If youve ever programmed
web sites with Zend Framework 1, you might remember those extra long class names like Zend_Controller_Abstract. The idea with long names was utilized to avoid name collisions between
different components. Each component defined its own name prefix, like Zend_ or My_.
To achieve the same goal, Zend Framework 2 uses the PHP 5.3 language feature called
namespaces. The namespaces allow to solve the name collisions between code components, and
provide you with the ability to make the long names shorter.
A namespace is a container for a group of names. You can nest namespaces into each other.
If a class or function does not define a namespace, it lives inside of the global namespace (for
example, PHP classes Exception and DateTime belong to global namespace).
A real-world example of a namespace definition (taken from ZendMvc component) is presented
below:
1
2

<?php
namespace Zend\Mvc;

3
4

// ...

5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

/**
* Main application class for invoking applications.
*/
class Application
{
// ... class members were omitted for simplicity ...
}

Web Site Operation

30

You may notice that in example above we have the opening <?php tag which tells the
PHP engine that the text after the tag is a PHP code. In example above, when the file
contains only the PHP code (without mixing PHP and HTML tags), you dont need to
insert the closing ?> tag after the end of the code. Moreover, this is not recommended
and may cause undesired effects, if you occasionally add some character after the
closing ?> tag.

In Zend Framework 2, all classes belong to top-level Zend namespace. The line 2 defines
the namespace Mvc, which is nested into Zend namespace, and all classes of this component
(including the Application class shown in this example on lines 9-12) belong to this namespace.
You separate nested namespace names with the back-slash character (\).
In other parts of code, you reference the Application class using its full name:
<?php
$application = new \Zend\Mvc\Application;

Please note the leading back-slash in \Zend\Mvc\Application name. It represents the

global namespace.

It is also possible to use the alias (short name for the class) with the help of PHPs use statement:
<?php
// Define the alias in the beginning of the file.
use Zend\Mvc\Application;
// Later in your code, use the short class name.
$application = new Application;

Although the alias allows to use a short class name instead of the full name, its usage
is optional. You are not required to always use aliases, and can refer the class by its full
name.

Every PHP file of your application typically defines the namespace (except index.php entry
script and config files, which typically do not). For example, the main module of your site, the
Application module, defines its own namespace whose name equals to the module name:

Web Site Operation

<?php
namespace Application;
// ...
class Module
{
// ... class members were omitted for simplicity ...
}

The rest of this chapter is skipped in this free sample.

31

4 Model-View-Controller
In this chapter, you will learn about the models, views and controllers (MVC). The web
application uses the MVC pattern to separate business logic from presentation. The goal of this
is to allow for code reusability and separation of concerns.

4.1 Get the Hello World Example from GitHub

In this and in the next chapters, we will provide some code examples that you may want to
reproduce yourself. It may be difficult for a novice to write code without mistakes. If you are
stuck or can not understand why your code does not work, you can download the complete Hello
World web application from GitHub code hosting. The examples from this chapter are mostly
the part of this sample application.
To download the Hello World application, visit this page and click the Download ZIP button to
download the code as a ZIP archive (see figure 4.1). When download is complete, unpack the
archive to some directory.
Then navigate to the helloworld directory containing the complete source code of the Hello
World example:
/using-zend-framework-2-book
/helloworld
...

The Hello World is a complete web site which can be installed on your machine. To install the
example, you can either edit your default virtual host file or create a new one. After editing the
file, restart the Apache HTTP Server and open the web site in your web browser.

4.2 Separating Business Logic from Presentation

A typical web site has three kinds of functionality: code implementing business logic, code
implementing user interaction and code rendering HTML pages (presentation). Before PHP
frameworks, programmers usually merged these three types of code in a single big PHP script
file, which made it a pain to test and maintain such a code, especially when you write a large
web site.
https://github.com/olegkrivtsov/using-zend-framework-2-book

Model-View-Controller

33

Figure 4.1. The Hello World sample can be downloaded from GitHub

Since that time, PHP became object-oriented, and now you can organize your code into classes.
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern is just a set of advices telling you how to organize
your classes in a better manner, to make them easy to maintain.
In MVC, classes implementing your business logic are called models, code snippets rendering
HTML pages are called views, and the classes responsible for interacting with user are called
controllers.
Views are implemented as code snippets, not as classes. This is because views are
typically very simple and contain only the mixture of HTML and inline PHP code.

The main objective of the MVC concept is to separate the business logic (models) from its
visualization (views). This is also called the separation of concerns, when each layer does its
specific tasks only.
By separating your models from views, you reduce the number of dependencies between them.
Therefore, changes made to one of the layers have the lowest possible impact on other layers.
This separation also improves the code reusability. For example, you can create multiple visual
representations for the same models.

Model-View-Controller

34

To better understand how this works, lets remember that any web site is just a PHP program
receiving an HTTP request from the web server, and producing an HTTP response. Figure 4.2
shows how an HTTP request is processed by the MVC application and how the response is
generated:

Figure 4.2. HTTP request processing in an MVC web application

First, the site visitor enters an URL in his web browser, for example http://localhost, and
the web browser sends the request to the web server over the Internet.
Web servers PHP engine runs the index.php entry script. The only thing the entry script
does is creating the Zend\Mvc\Application class instance.
The application uses its router component for parsing the URL and determining to which
controller to pass the request. If the route match is found, the controller is instantiated and
its appropriate action method is called.

Model-View-Controller

35

In the controllers action method, parameters are retrieved from GET and POST variables.
To process the incoming data, the controller instantiates appropriate model classes and
calls their methods.
Model classes use business logic algorithms to process the input data and return the
output data. The business logic algorithms are application-specific, and typically include
retrieving data from database, managing files, interacting with external systems and so
on.
The result of calling the models are passed to the corresponding view script for the
rendering of the HTML page.
View script uses the model-provided data for rendering the HTML page.
Controller passes the resulting HTTP response to application.
Web server returns the resulting HTML web page to the users web browser.
The user sees the page in browser window.
Now you might have some idea how models, views and controllers cooperate to generate HTML
output. In the next sections, we describe them in more details.
The rest of this chapter is skipped in this free sample.