Posted by C. on 07/16/07 14:57

On 15 Jul, 17:35, Sanders Kaufman <bu...@kaufman.net> wrote:
> I've been programming a long time, but I'm not very bright these days.
>
> I've been using Zend Studio for a couple of years (LOVING IT!!) to build
> a web framework.
>
> I've been *hearing* about a Zend Framework, but never looked into it. I
> just got back from the web site... and I guess my dimness is shining,
> because I can't figure out what it is.
>
> Can someone give me a little narrative about what it is and how I might
> use it?


A framework is:

1) a library of code
2) a template for extending the library
3) rules about structuring your code to a standard
4) prewritten modules (e.g. templating systems, user management pages,
unit testing)

As you will have no doubt found out, there are lots of frameworks out
there, most of which are fairly inflexible and/or designed for very
specific functions. I've found that Seagull fits my needs quite well,
but for a very different approach look at Prado which layers XML on
top of PHP.

Zend is rather nice in that it imposes less on the structure of your
code than some frameworks and is intended to allow you to plugin your
own code to standard APIs.

For a framework to be of any use it should save you time and effort in
coding - but they all demand a fairly high level of familiarity with
the framework.

HTH

C.

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