From rather humble beginnings as the Personal Home Page scripting language, PHP has found its way into almost every server, corporation, and dev shop in the world. On an average day, somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million coders do something in PHP. Even when you use a well-understood language like PHP, building a modern web application requires tools that decrease development time and cost while improving code quality. Frameworks such as Ruby-on-Rails and Django have been getting a lot of attention as a result.

For PHP coders, the Zend Framework offers that same promise without the need to move away from PHP. This powerful collection of components can be used in part or as a whole to speed up the development process. Zend Framework has the backing of Zend Technologies; the driving force behind the PHP programming language in which it is written. The first production release of the Zend Framework became available in July of 2007.

Zend Framework in Action is a comprehensive tutorial that shows how to use the Zend Framework to create web-based applications and web services. This book takes you on an over-the-shoulder tour of the components of the Zend Framework as you build a high quality, real-world web application. This book is organized around the techniques you'll use every day as a web developer "data handling, forms, authentication, and so forth. As you follow the running example, you'll learn to build interactive Ajax-driven features into your application without sacrificing nuts-and-bolts considerations like security and performance.

This book is aimed at the competent PHP developer who wants to master framework-driven web development. Zend Framework in Action goes beyond the docs but still provides quick access to the most common topics encountered in the development of web applications.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 16 Ratings

Good in depth book - 2009-09-15
Reviewer Rating:
This book gives an in depth coverage of Zend Framework. I've learned a lot from it, although it has some 'rough edges'.
The problem with books about Zend Framework is that ZF evolves rapidly and thus books are already outdated when they're released. However, I think this book is still a good addition to any starting ZF programmer.

The worst programming book ever - 2009-08-20
Reviewer Rating:
I have to agree with the majority of reviewers here. This is the worst programming book I have ever read. The book has major mistakes and it simply jumps over a topic before it has been explained. I would avoid this book at all costs.

Not for beginners - 2009-07-29
Reviewer Rating:
Overall this book provides a good run through of the Zend Framework. But I have two main issues with this book.

Firstly I don't think it is great for ZF beginners. I have been using ZF for over a year and for me it was a good resource to discover some new components I hadn't been using. Also it provided some better alternative ways of doing things within the framework which will be very usefull. But I imagine for an absolute ZF beginner the book would be difficult to read. At various points advanced concepts are introduced and not thoroughly explained or explained poorly.

My second issue with the book is the editing. There are many errors in both the code listings and general text. This is very problematic in a technical book as one misplaced word can have a huge effect. This book has obviously been rushed out with little time given to correcting these numerous errors.

I don't recomend this book to someone just starting out with ZF. However if like me you have some experience in the framework and are looking to expand your knowledge then this book is adequate if a little frustrating.

Possibly the worst programming book I've ever purchased - 2009-06-21
Reviewer Rating:
The first few chapters make sense, but after that it's like a roller coaster ride. The book jumps all over the place, often not explaining concepts and topics thoroughly enough. There's just no focus whatsoever in this book ... it's so easy to get lost in it, and in the blink of an eye! One minute you'll be thinking "I get it!" and the next minute you're thinking "Did I miss something?". Well, it's not that you'd miss something ... it's just that the author doesn't explain things well enough and jumps on to the next topic ... topics that may not even be relevant at all. Code samples don't work, often times ... and sometimes they're just flat out wrong.

It's obvious this book was just thrown together, without much proof reading. If you like doing a lot of debugging on coding samples and figuring things out on your own, then this is the book for you! Othewise, avoid this book like the plague.

Decent concepts, but a lousy tutorial - 2009-05-14
Reviewer Rating:
While it's clear the authors understand Zend, they do not teach it well. Beginners (like myself) often need a step-by-step process to figure out what's going on, and this book does not provide that. Worse, it thinks it does: it will give you several steps to take, several chunks of code to create, and then show you a screenshot of what the finished page should look like. Unfortunately, the code they show ALMOST NEVER works. You have to dive into the dozens of files of the Zend framework and scour the internet to try to figure out what's missing.

Also, this book often presents chunks of code with no indication as to which file the code should go in, or where those files should live (this is important in Zend). Trying to learn Zend using this book is maddening. Right now, there are several new books on Zend about to be published, and I'm hoping one of them does a much better job.

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