ZEND/PHP CONFERENCE & EXPO 2006 - CALL FOR PAPERS

I'm happy to inform that Zend is holding its 2nd annual Zend/PHP conference in October 2006 in San Jose, California. Last year was a great success which will surely be hard to beat, but I hope that this year will be at least as good.

More information for people who are interested in participating and speaking at the conference can be found here. Submissions need to be made before June 15th, 2006.

See you there!

Quick Zend Framework update.

Just wanted to give a quick update on Zend Framework.

We've already received a lot of great feedback. Thanks everyone!
We have a few problems in this initial release, some due to last minute changes (like Zend_Filter refactoring) and other things that slipped by or were planned for after the first code drop. So let me just give a quick recap of what those problems are so that you know what you can expect to be fixed in the coming days:

- Fix documentation (we mistakenly included old docs for ZDb_DataObject which doesn't exist, and didn't bundle the Controller docs). Thanks to the power of community there are some underground docs online now :) http://www.akrabat.com/2006/03/04/zend-framework-front-controller/ but we will also bundle the official docs in the next drop. We are also planning on beautifying and integrating the docs more closely with the Web site.

- Resolve issues that crepped in due to last minute Zend_Filter refactoring. Thanks to Chris Thompson who sent in instructions on getting it to run again:
1. In the file "Zend/Http.php" change the line
"$allow = Zend_InputFilter::HOST_ALLOW_DNS | Zend_InputFilter::HOST_ALLOW_LOCAL;"
to
"$allow = Zend_Filter::HOST_ALLOW_DNS | Zend_Filter::HOST_ALLOW_LOCAL;"
2. In the file "Zend/Filter.php", at the top add the line "include_once 'Zend/Filter/Exception.php';".
3. Also in the file "Zend/Filter.php", comment the line "throw new Zend_Filter_Exception('Internal error: IP determination failed');" (did not look into why -- I just commented it out)

- Setup NEWS file so that people can track the changes/fixes between code drops.

Some general issues which we're planning to resolve in the coming days:
- Bundle framework unit tests with the next drop
- Setup mailing list archives
- Provide anonymous SVN access so that people can pull current versions by themselves
- Fix Web site link to CLA
- Add instructions on how to subscribe to the mailing list in a prominent place on the framework site.

Thanks all for the feedback. It's pretty amazing how many people actually downloaded and looked at this stuff on a weekend. Late Friday evening is a developer friendly release :)

PHP Collaboration Project reaches major milestone

Last October, we announced the PHP Collaboration Project. The idea was to collaborate around selected areas in PHP to further enhance the overall PHP eco-system. At that time we mentioned three projects which we were planning to start. The Zend Framework, an Eclipse-based PHP IDE framework, and best practices. I'm happy to say that today all these three projects have made significant progress and with that we have reached the first milestone in this initiative.

The past few months have been great. We had many more than expected individuals and companies who showed interest in contributing. We managed to gather a relatively small but solid team of people to move all these projects forward. I'd like to thank everyone who has helped and worked hard (often on their free time) to make this happen.

We have finally updated the static PHP Collaboration Project page which now points to the individual projects which we have started:

- The Zend Framework - We have released a preview release of the Zend Framework. I'd like to thank all the initial contributors who have been of tremendous help in getting this off the ground. There is a lot of work still to do, but after having already seen four applications build with the framework, it is clear that it already includes some very cool and useful modules.

- The Eclipse PHP IDE framework - We have submitted a proposal to the Eclipse Foundation for a community based open-source PHP IDE framework. If all goes well in next week's creation review, we will be submitting the initial code drop shortly thereafter. In the spirit of Eclipse, we have already reached out to community members, including the PHP/Eclipse project, and have received great interest to join the effort.

- The Zend Developer Zone - We have launched our new developer zone. The goal of this developer zone is to provide best practices with high-quality content from partners and the community. We already have many companies and invidiuals lined up to collaborate around this site who will share their knowledge for the benefit of the PHP community. The site will cover many aspects of best practices including Zend Framework use, interoperating with other technologies, and general PHP best practices around subjects such as security. The Zend Developer Zone is still under active development so expect further changes in the coming week.

I'd like to thank again the many people who have helped out with these three projects. I have no doubt that they will benefit the PHP community.

Happy PHPing!