Uncreative

Just a quick blurb for those using the Zend Framework: I've added two very, very hackish scripts to my CWAC repository. The first one, "create_model", reads an existing schema from a database and creates model classes for use with CWAC_ActiveRecord. It's just a quick (very) dirty hack made to simply have something useable quickly, so I don't expect it to work with anything else but MySQL (which is what I use in my testing environment). It's not completely useless though and it allows to be run over the model classes multiple times to support schema updates, without destroying code that was manually added to the classes in the meantime. The second script is made simply to aid my laziness: It's called "zend_create" and will just set up a basic project structure for a ZF-powered website, including CWAC-Support Just type: zend_create.php [PROJECT NAME] ([DB NAME] [DB USER] [DB PASSWORD]) and happily code away. Also, I found an issue with the "output action templates when the destuctor is called"-approach: When somewhere in the script there's an exception and there also is no action template yet, the destructor would be called within the active exception. The destructor would then try to raise another exception because the template is missing, which cannot be done because no exception can be thrown while another one is still active. To work around this, I simply catch the additional exception and try to display a message explaining what happened... (Click here to view the code) I'm not very happy with this though and begin to question that whole "output when destructor is called" approach. I still like the idea, because it means not having to call "render()" manually at the end of each action (so it heavily supports my laziness ), but I wonder if there are other drawbacks...

So I came across an entry on PHPDeveloper.org tonight, announcing a free web-based PHP5 certification. Well, what can I say... reading the word "free" usually blanks out everything else for me so I blindly clicked the link, took the certification and was amazed.....

Let me start this post with the announcement that even before the first official release of my own set of components, I've already changed their name, or their namespace prefix, if you will. As someone who commented on one of my previous entries has pointed out, "eZeAR" looked pretty ugly and was hard to type. Having to type it a few times myself since I came up with it, I had to agree. So everything's now prefixed with the much easier CWAC. It also sounds a lot sillier when pronounced (imagine a duck...), and I like silly. So there you have it. Who can guess what CWAC stands for? But now for something completely different: The topic at hand. Today, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to talk about beefing up the most central component of the Zend_Frameworks MVC package: Zend_Action_Controller. The Controller basically is a class wherein you define one method for each individual action you want the controller to perform. Which controller and action is being called is deduced from the URL you've typed into your browser. For example: ...would cause the method "showAction" in the controller class "ImageController" to be called. That's all good and well, but this is where automation currently ends in the Zend Framework. Everything else has to be done by hand. If you wanted to have the output for your action being displayed within a fancy template, you're on your own. Make an instance of the Zend_View class (or a preferred template engine of your choice), specify path to your templates, assign variables, specify the actual template to use, output the result. Rinse, repeat for every damn action in your controller. Does that sound redundant and inconvenient to you? It sure does to me. Luckily, the strength of the Zend Framework is that it is very easily customizable. So let's make this a bit more convenient...