Cross Functional

The documentation over @ The Manual isn’t exactly simple, so I’m going to do my best to make autoloading in Zend Framework a breeze.

First, start out by bootstrapping your application w/ this autoload init method. This should be located in /application/Bootstrap.php.

class Bootstrap extends Zend_Application_Bootstrap_Bootstrap
{
    protected function _initAutoload()
    {
        $autoloader = new Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader(array(
            'namespace' => 'MyApp',
            'basePath' => dirname(__FILE__),
        ));
        return $autoloader;
    }
}

Autoloading Forms

For a form named login, make a file called /application/forms/Login.php. Inside that file define a class named MyApp_Form_Login. Now you can instantiate it from anywhere in your app by simply calling new MyApp_Form_Login().

Autoloading Models & DbTables

For a model called user, make a file called /application/models/User.php. Inside that file define a class named MyApp_Model_User. Now you can instantiate it from anywhere in your app by simply calling new MyApp_Model_User().

For a dbtable called user, make a file called /application/models/DbTable/User.php. Inside that file define a class named MyApp_Model_DbTable_User. Now you can instantiate it from anywhere in your app by simply calling new MyApp_Model_DbTable_User().

You would think that upgrading to the new Zend Framework would be a piece a cake right? Sorry, no cigar. Let’s get right to it. Most of the changes will occur in your .htaccess file, index.php, and bootstrap.php.

Start by making sure your .htaccess file looks like this:

SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV development
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -l [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^.*$ index.php [NC,L]

Nothing to different here, if anything you lightened this up from Zend’s original QuickStart.

Now let’s check out index.php:

// Define path to application directory
if( !defined('APPLICATION_PATH') ) {
	define('APPLICATION_PATH',
                realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application'));
}

// Define application environment
if( !defined('APPLICATION_ENV') ) {
    define('APPLICATION_ENV', (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ?
    	getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') : 'production'));
}

// Ensure library/ is on include_path
set_include_path(implode(PATH_SEPARATOR, array(
    realpath(APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library'),
    get_include_path(),
)));

/** Zend_Application */
require_once 'Zend/Application.php';

// Create application, bootstrap, and run
$application = new Zend_Application(
    APPLICATION_ENV,
    APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/application.ini'
);
$application->bootstrap()->run();

So far pretty straightforward. The .htaccess file routes all requests to index.php; which sets the constants for APPLICATION_PATH and APPLICATION_ENV, includes the library folder, and instantiates an instance of Zend_Application. Oh look, a config file is being passed in. lets check that out as well. Here’s an example of mine:

[production]
phpSettings.display_startup_errors = 0
phpSettings.display_errors = 0
phpSettings.date.timezone = "UTC"
bootstrap.path = APPLICATION_PATH "/Bootstrap.php"
bootstrap.class = "Bootstrap"
resources.frontController.controllerDirectory = APPLICATION_PATH "/controllers"
resources.layout.layoutPath = APPLICATION_PATH "/layouts/scripts"
resources.view[] =
resources.db.adapter = "pdo_mysql"
resources.db.params.host = "localhost"
resources.db.params.username = "username"
resources.db.params.password = "password"
resources.db.params.dbname = "password"
resources.db.params.unix_socket = "/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock"
resources.db.isDefaultTableAdapter = true
 
[staging : production]
 
[testing : production]
phpSettings.display_startup_errors = 1
phpSettings.display_errors = 1
 
[development : production]
phpSettings.display_startup_errors = 1
phpSettings.display_errors = 1

Notice that the development, testing, and staging configuration sets inherit from production. One thing that was difficult to find in Zend’s documentation was the use of resources.db.isDefaultTableAdapter = true, this enables you to call Zend_Db_Table::getDefaultAdapter() anywhere in your application to grab the adapter. This should make it easy to upgrade any of your model or dbtable classes.

Finally, let’s check out Bootstrap.php:

class Bootstrap extends Zend_Application_Bootstrap_Bootstrap
{
    protected function _initAutoload()
    {
        $autoloader = new Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader(array(
            'namespace' => 'Default',
            'basePath'  => dirname(__FILE__),
        ));
        return $autoloader;
    }
    protected function _initPresentation()
    {
        $this->bootstrap('view');
        $view = $this->getResource('view');
        $view->doctype('XHTML1_STRICT');
        $view->headMeta()->setHttpEquiv('Content-Type',
                'text/html; charset=utf-8');
	$view->headLink()->setStylesheet('/css/shared/reset.css');
	$view->headLink()->appendStylesheet('/css/shared/common.css');
	$view->headTitle("MyApp | ");
    }
    protected function _initActionHelpers()
    {
    	Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::addPath(
    		APPLICATION_PATH."/controllers/helpers"
    	);
    }
    protected function _initRoutes()
    {
    	$config = new Zend_Config_Ini (
    		APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/routes.ini', 'production'
    	);
    	$frontController = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
    	$router = $frontController->getRouter();
    	$router->addConfig( $config, 'routes' );
    }
}

A couple things to point out here. Obviously, things have changed a bit. This file is no longer a bunch of procedural code setting everything up, its OO baby. The point of this is to group your setup code into logical groups, so you can bootstrap items individually for testing. Any method beginning with _init will be fired when a request is handled. As long as you the database configuration in your application.ini, then there is no need to setup the adapter here. Also to take advantage of the autoloader, make sure your files follow this convention:

/models/Comment.php                Default_Model_Comment
/modes/DbTable/Comment.php         Default_Model_DbTable_Comment
/forms/Comment.php                 Default_Form_Comment

Now you should be able to grab any of these instances by simply instantiating. If you haven’t set up your routes in a config file, I recommend it.

Using Zend_Config with the RewriteRouter

That’s it.