Zend Framework

Zend Framework is a PHP framework developed by Zend (a company behind PHP). Zend Framework is one of the most flexible and extensible MVC framework for PHP. It provides more than 50 components for rapid application development. Zend Framework can be used for both MVC and non-MVC applications.

Advantages

Zend Framework has become popular in PHP developers because of its flexibility, extensibility, powerful library and huge community support. Main advantages of Zend Framework are described as below:

  • It’s Open Source and Free.
  • Installation is very simple and quick.
  • Provides lots of components commonly used in applications like cache, log, mail, session etc.
  • It hasUse-At-Will architecture with loosely coupled components. Each component is developed with minimal interdependencies. Sorequired components can be pulled out to be used separately without using whole framework.
  • It implements extensible MVC supporting layouts
  • Supports variety of databases including MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL etc.
  • Provides flexible caching subsystem with filesystem, memory and APC
  • It has built in support for I18N(Internationalization) and L10N (Localization).
  • Any component or class can be extended or overridden to customize the behavior.
  • Provides libraryfor latest web technologies like Web Services, AJAX etc.
  • It has built in support for Dojo Toolkit
  • All components are fully object oriented and utilizes PHP 5 features
  • It has very active community support through wiki, blogs and forums.
  • Simple documentation and quick start guide is available.
  • It has transparent roadmap and development cycle, so anyone can see the development.
  • People can contribute to Zend Framework by signing CLA (Contribution License Agreement). It has contributorsall over the world.
  • Each contributor of Zend Framework has to pass through predefined development standards and development life cycle, so each component is maintained with same quality
  • Each component is well tested with Unit Testing method
  • Its issue tracking system is made public, so any one can raise any issue or suggest feature.
  • MVC framework
  • Database access with ORM
  • Lucene-compatible search engine
  • Advanced I18N support
  • Authorization and Authentication support
  • Rich web services client interfaces, including Google Data API and StrikeIron
  • Form component with Ajax support
  • Layout support with two step rendering process
  • Enhanced View
  • LDAP authentication
  • Enhanced Lucene Search Engine with support of advanced queries using wildcards, date ranges and fuzzy search
  • Extended Ajax Support with action helpers to automate Ajax detection
  • UTF-8 character sets in Adobe PDF creation
  • Significant enhancements in Google GDtata web services
  • Lucene 2.3 Index File Format support
  • Zend_Session save handler for Database Tables
  • Paginator component
  • Figlet support
  • ReCaptcha service
  • Captcha from Form Element
  • Zend_Config_Xml attribute support
  • Zend_File_Transfer component
  • File Upload Form Element
  • Zend_Wildfire component with Firebug Log Writer
  • Built in support of Adobe AMF with component Zend_Amf with support of AMF0 and AMF3 protocols
  • Built in support of Dojo Toolkit
  • Twitter service
  • JQuery support with extra library
  • Google Book Search API
  • Preliminary support for GData Protocol v2 in Zend_GData
  • Support for Open Office XML documents in Lucene Search Engine Indexer
  • Performance enhancement in class loader, controller and other components
  • Zend_Tool in incubator
  • Progress bar component
  • I18N imporovements
  • File transfer enhancements
  • More flexible handling of complex types in Zend_Soap
  • Rapid application development with command line manipulation of project with Zend_Tool component
  • Cloud computing support with Zend_Service_Amazon_Ec2 and Zend_Service_Amazon_S3 components
  • Application bootstrap support with Zend_Application component
  • NavigationsupportZend_Navigation component
  • Automatic code generation with Zend_CodeGenerator component
  • Lucene Search Engine enhancements with support of search from multiple indexes
  • Tag cloud support with Zend_Tag_Cloud component
  • Phonecode support in Zend_Locale
  • Local and remote messaging and queue services for offloading asynchronous processes with Zend_Queue and Zend_Service_Amazon_Sqs components
  • Zend Platform’s Job Queue support
  • Support for RESTful resources
  • Added RSS and Atom feed reader component
  • Microsoft’s SQL server driver support
  • Plural support in Translation
  • Custom build layer support for Dojo
  • Annotation processing support in PDF
  • PHP 5.3 compatibility including support for new features in mysqli extension
  • LDAP library improvements
  • Zend_Barcode component
  • Feed writer component
  • New filters: Boolean, Compress, Decompress, Null
  • Zend Monitor support for logging
  • OpenAuth support
  • Services: Developer Garden, Live Docx, Windows Azure
  • Validation libraries: Barcode, Callback, CreditCard, Post Code
  • Mobile support with user agent detection and device capabilities detection
  • SimpleCloud API
  • Amazon SimpleDB support
  • eBay Findings API support
  • MariaDB Compatibility
  • New configuration formats: YAML, JSON
  • URL Shortening servicessupport

Zend Framework Version History

Zend Framework Version 1.0 (July 2, 2007)

Zend Framework Version 1.5 (March 17, 2008)

Zend Framework Version 1.6 (September 2, 2008)

Zend Framework Version 1.7 (November 17, 2008)

Zend Framework Version 1.8 (April 30, 2009)

Zend Framework Version 1.9 (July 31, 2009)

Zend Framework Version 1.10 (January 27, 2010)

Zend Framework Version 1.11 (November 2, 2010)

Our Expertise with Zend Framework Development

We have very experienced developers having experience in Object Oriented application based on Zend Framework. We have expertise in developing community to enterprise level applications based on Zend Framework.

Our developers are trained to develop Zend Framework application with Zend standards and programming paradigm providing flexibility, security and extensibility in application for future enhancements.

We have also expertise in integrating Zend Framework based application with other frameworks like Symfony. Our developers are skilled to develop custom components extending Zend Framework library for application specific requirements.

Future Growth

Zend Framework is one of the fastest developing frameworks.Because of large community support and contribution, Zend Framework has been improved very fast.Zend Framework is one of the most suitable frameworks for community as well as enterprise level applications.

Next major version of Zend Framework 2.0 is being improved with latest PHP 5.3 programming structures like namespace and Lambda functions. It will improve the implementation of MVC components.

Research and Development

Our team is always upbeat with latest improvements or changes as well as upcoming versions of Zend Framework. We encourage our team to spend certain amount of time to research around latest technologies. We regularly follow blogs, tweets and articles posted by Zend Framework’s core developers and discover latest techniques for improving Zend Framework based application.

Our developers do regular research on programming patterns and techniques for making Zend Framework based applications more flexible and scalable. We follow development standards recommended by Zend.

Recent Development

We have recently developed and delivered various kinds of Zend Framework based applications like Community Portals, Real Estate Portals etc. We are actively developing our Gujarati community portal Gujjubhai.com with Zend Framework. We have also been working on many e-commerce websitesbased on Magento Commerce which is also developed using Zend Framework.