John Coggeshall

Hi! I’m John!

• Involved in PHP since circa 1996

• Sr. Architect, Zend Global Services

• PHP Core Contributor

•ZF Contributor

Introduction to ZF2

In this talk we’re going to look over the key components of any ZF2 application

• The Model, View, and Controller architecture

• The Module Architecture

• Service Manager

• Event Manager

Getting Started

The easiest way to get started in ZF2 is to start with the skeleton application:

https://github.com/zendframework/zendskeletonapplication

$ composer create-project \

-sdev \

-repository-url=“https://packages.zendframework.com” \

zendframework/skeleton-application \

/path/to/install

Basic ZF2 File structure

config/ - Application Config

module/ - Application modules

public/ - Docroot for images, css, etc.

ZF2 Modules

In ZF2 modules are a core concept when developing applications. Everything including the application is a module.

Modules can be application-specific or can be written generically and then loaded into the application via composer

How do Modules work?

Every ZF2 module starts with a Module class which describes the module and the things it provides to the application

Services

Event Handlers

Controllers

Routes

Etc.

How do Modules work?

Modules also have their own configuration files which can setup default values that are later over-written by the application’s configurations.

Useful for creating module-specific routes, or module-specific configurations, etc.

config/module.config.php

How do Modules work?

The module class can implement a number of useful methods

getAutoLoaderConfig() – configure the way classes are autoloaded through this module

getServiceConfig() – set up the way services this module provides can be created and accessed

getModuleDependencies() – Define module dependencies

onBootstrap() – Executed when module is fired up

How are modules structured?

ZF2 MVC

In ZF2, the MVC architecture is entirely driven by the events (Zend\Mvc\MvcEvent)

Bootstrap

Dispatch

Dispatch Error

Finish

Render

Render Error

Route

ZF2 MVC

Typically you don’t have to worry too much about these things, as the basic MVC takes care of things for you

You define routes in the application config which map to controllers / actions

These controller / actions get executed and return a result

This result is passed to the View component to be rendered

ZF2 MVC

Events are useful however because they allow you to augment or short-circuit the default behavior

I.e. Catch the dispatch event and make sure the user is authenticated

I.e. Catch the dispatch error and render error events to do custom logging

Service Manager

MVC, and ZF2 applications in general rely heavily on something called the Service Manager to deal with application dependencies

Examples: The DB adapter used by the application is created by the Service Manager

Service Manager

Implementing dependencies and components as services allows modules to be completely decoupled from each other

Services are identified by unique ID, which is referenced when the service is required

Customization (i.e. a different DB adapter) can be done simply by over-writing the factory associated with that unique ID

Service Manager

In a module services can be defined in various locations

module.config.php (the ‘service_manager’ key)

Module::getServiceConfig() (the programaticapproach)

Service Manager

How services can be defined

By factory – identify the key to either a class that implements a Factory interface or other callable which returns the instance

By invokable – Simply identify the class associated with this service

Aliases – Services can have an alias for complicated dependency scenarios

Working with Routes

Routes are one of the first things done in MVC

Goal – Match a given URL to something actionable

Examples

Literal Route (i.e. /exactly/this)

Segment Route (i.e. /articles[/:article_id])

RegEx (i.e. /blog/(?<id>[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)

Working with Routes

Below is an example simple route

Controllers

When a route is matched, a dispatch event is fired, and the corresponding controller/action is executed

The controller is loaded via service manager (allowing for dependency injection)

Controller action is called and one of two things can be returned

A Response object

An array or instance of the ViewModel class

Summary

This is a very surface-level exploration into the complex possibilities of ZF2, but enough to get started.

Get to know Service Manager and Event Manager very well and they will serve you fantastically, allowing you to write powerful reusable components

Any questions?

Slides will be available at http://www.slideshare.net/coogle