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Tag: zend

PHP: Getting individual packages on Zend Framework

February 22, 2009
1 Comment

@binarykitten (on Twitter) had the question I officially give up.. how the hell do you download only 1 component of the Zend Framework? I’ve been looking all over the site and I told her that I wasn’t aware of a method, that there were potential dependencies and to maybe try asking @calevans. He responded with the link http://epic.codeutopia.net/pack/ which appears to be a packager for the PHP Zend Framework versions 1.6 and 1.7 developed by Jani Hartikainen (@jhartikainen).

So, yes, it is possible to (unofficially) download parts of the Zend Framework and not have to worry about dependences.

PHP: Zend Session: don’t set it up in the Initalizer

January 9, 2009
2 Comments

I’ve just wasted a few hours trying to get Zend_Session (part of the PHP Zend Framework) working correctly – previously, on this codebase, I had “rolled my own” cookie and session management system, but I thought I’d do it properly and utilise the Zend_Session system and store it all in a database…

It didn’t work.

Short answer as to why my sessions weren’t saving into the database (even after I switched to using the “default” Zend_Session_SaveHandler_DbTable ) was that I was setting up the session within the “routeStartup” section of Initalizer.php (which is loaded, in MVC fashion, via the bootstrap.php file). Changing bootstrap.php to:

// Prepare the front controller.
$frontController = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
// Change to 'production' parameter under production environemtn
$frontController->registerPlugin(new Initializer('development'));
$maxSessionTime=60*60*24*30*6; // six months
Zend_Session::setSaveHandler(new My_Session_DbTable($maxSessionTime));
Zend_Session::rememberMe($maxSessionTime);

(i.e. take move the session savehandler out of the Initializer, but keep all the $thingy=new Zend_Session_Namespace whereever they are needed) means it started to work.

Most annoying thing: that there was no reason it didn’t work (no warnings, no errors, no documentation hints and no ‘out of place feeling’). Meh.

PHP: Zend_Dojo_Form SubmitButton not showing

December 5, 2008
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In version 1.7.0 of the Zend Framework, specifically the Zend_Dojo_Form_Element_SubmitButton class (which makes the Zend_Form use the Dojo Javascript library), there is a small bug which prevents the label section of the Submit button being shown.

To work around this, just add something like:
$eElement->setDijitParam(‘label’,’Submit label’);
to work around the issue.

This is a known issue in the Zend Framework and will be fixed in the next release… If, however, like me you have spent a good hour or so trying to find out why your implementation doesn’t work and other demonstrations on the internet do, well now you should be able to find out why!

PHP: Difference in Dates Using Zend_Date

December 4, 2008
1 Comment

I’ve had to write some code recently that handles peoples ages based on their date of births… Something simple you expect, until you realise that PHP can’t really deal with years before 1970 (due to UNIX date time restrictions). Luckily Zend_Date (in the Zend Framework) comes to hand to help!

But how do you actually turn a date in the format YYYY-MM-DD into a difference in years? Well, here’s how! We’re relying on the date to be consistently 10 characters long in the format YYYY-MM-DD with any unused date “zerod” out (for example, if we are using OpenID which allows people to “hide” parts of their DOB):

if (preg_match('/^([1-2][0-9][0-9][0-9])\-([0-1][0-9])\-([0-3][0-9])$/',$sDob,$aMatches)) {
    $iYear=$aMatches[1];
    $iMonth=$aMatches[2];
    if ($iMonth<1 || $iMonth>12) {
        // Set a minimum/standard month for this calculation
        $iMonth=1;
    }//end if ($iMonth<1 || $iMonth>12) {
    $iDay=$aMatches[3];
    if ($iDay<1 || $iDay>31) {
        // Set a minimum/standard day of the month for this calculation
        $iDay=1;
    }//end if ($iDay<1 || $iDay>31) {
    // If anybody was born before 1850 or after 3,000 (say they have a time machine)
    // then, sorry, they'll have to check their date of birth elsewhere!
    if ($iYear>1850 && $iYear<3000) {         if (checkdate($iMonth,$iDay,$iYear)) {             $cNowDate=new Zend_Date();             $cUserDate=new Zend_Date(Array('year'=>$iYear,'month'=>$iMonth,'day'=>$iDay));
            // Sanity check that the date the user entered is actually in the past!
            // No future time travellers welcome here!
            if ($cNowDate->isLater($cUserDate)) {
                $cDifference=$cNowDate->subDate($cUserDate);
                $aDifference=$cDifference->toArray();
                print 'Year difference is:'.$aDifference['year'];
            }//end if ($cNowDate->isLater($cUserDate)) {
        }//end if (checkdate($iMonth,$iDay,$iYear)) {
    }//end if ($iYear>1850 && $iYear<3000) {  }//end if (preg_match

PHP: Zend Framework, MVC, Cookies and 4096 byte oddities

November 27, 2008
1 Comment

A little word of warning which has puzzled me for over 3 hours in debugging…

If you use Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->dispatch(); in your Zend Framework index.php file for firing off the MVC system, and the returned page is over 4096 bytes (4 kilobytes) in size you cannot set a cookie afterwards without causing the “fun” error “Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at …/library/Zend/Controller/Response/Abstract.php:546) in …”

To work around this, you’ll need to change the code from just:

Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->dispatch();
setcookie(. . .);

to:

$front=Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
$front->returnResponse(true);
$response=$front->dispatch();
#Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->dispatch();
setcookie(. . .);
$response->sendResponse();

I’m sure there is a slightly better way of setting Cookies in the Zend Framework, but that’s a work around for the normal way I’ve found.

If you’ve got any “better idea” suggestions, just let me know.

(I found this “buglet” because a drop down select menu I was making with Zend Form Element was causing the “Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by” error once a number of items were listed: it took 3 hours+ of detection work to narrow it down to a content size issue, then it was a process of elimination ruling out Zend_Form_Element, Zend_Form, Zend_View and Zend_View_Abstract (which helped a bit with the debugging on the issue) and then to Zend_Controller_Front to Zend_Controller_Response_Http and finally to Zend_Controller_Response_Abstract)