I recently read the book Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development by Keith Pope. Having done quite a lot of PHP work and having used Zend Framework, this book caught my attention. In general, I don't really like IT books that cover a technology, most of them tend to be a refactored version of the reference manual.

Not this book. It's actually nice and complementary to the reference manual provided by Zend: whereas the reference manual describes each component in great detail, this book takes a more high-level view of things, showing how the pieces of the puzzle fit together.

It does this by building a full application, from the ground up, step-by-step. Where needed, a detour past theory is not shied. So it's not all application: the author takes quite a lot of time to cover e.g. the ideas behind MVC.

I also liked the broad range of topics covered, including testing, something which is quite often overlooked for web applications.

In all, this is a good read. No earth-shattering must-have literature, but certainly useful. If you plan on building a lot of Zend Framework applications, this book will certainly help a lot. The only minor point is the somewhat confusing Model description. Other than that: good one.

Disclaimer: Packt Publishing was so kind to send me a review copy of this book. This would not stop me from declaring that it's utter shit, it just so happens to be that I liked the book. You can buy my time, not my opinion.

I've just released Zend_Service_Mollom 1.2.0, the Zend Framework component that integrates Mollom, the comment-spam checker.

New in this release is optional support for caching, making calls to Mollom faster.

I will propose this version for Zend Framework 1.8.

Download: Zend_Service_Mollom-1.2.0.zip
Git: git://git.savanne.be/git/zend.service.mollom.git
Documentation: here

I have just released Zend_Service_Mollom 1.0.0 and 1.1.0.

If you run a blog that accepts comments, you're probably familiar with comment spam. You could manually verify all comments, but that gets cumbersome after some time. A better solution is using an automatic scanner to verify comments. Like Mollom. Mollom checks your comments and provides CAPTCHAs if it's not 100% sure (about 2% of all comments). This takes the hard work of removing spam out of your hands, with the reassurance that no good content will be blocked. More on the How Mollom works page.

Zend_Service_Mollom is a Zend Framework component that makes using Mollom dead simple. Offcourse, even if you don't use the full Zend Framework for your website, it can also be used as a standalone component.

Yesterday marked the release of 1.0.0, which was immediately followed today by 1.1.0, after feedback from the Mollom team.

Download instructions and documentation can be found here: Zend_Service_Mollom.

Enjoy!

Long overdue, I've put up an updated version of the Integrating Zend Framework and Doctrine article. Now also featuring a git repository to make it easier to get your hands on the code.

Some updates from the past week:

Summer of Code
I have submitted my Google Summer of Code proposal for a Banshee project to the Mono Project. I might submit another one to GNOME (just in case), but only if I can work it out in greater detail. I don't want to waste reviewers time by sending in half a proposal.

Zend Framework & Doctrine
After trying out the Zend Framework (a PHP Application Development Framework) and Doctrine (a Object Relational Mapper for PHP) for quite some time, I wrote up an article on Integrating Zend Framework and Doctrine. If you want to play with some of the nicest PHP technologies currently around, check it out!

Oh and this is probably my first message to appear on planet.grep.be. Hi all!