php|architect's Guide to Programming with Zend Framework

Although there is some good information. You have to fight the book to get to it. Some of the code examples are broken. Nothing major, but when you buy a book to learn new coding techniques. It helps to not have to troubleshoot the example code. ( plus the author names the application directory "application" but in his paths he refers to it as app ). Also there is only one reference that I saw that points you to the example code. Maybe I missed it but I looked again before I wrote this, and I only found it listed once and within an explanation of some code. Since he doesn't print the entire files in the book and points back to the example code. I would think that you might make a bigger deal about making sure you download the example code. I don't mind not having all the files printed out. But if you going to do it make easy for the people buying your knowledge to follow.

Also when showing you the code example the author doesn't give the file name that you are looking at. So you will be looking at code and you dont know if you are looking at Controller code model or view code ( although view code usually has a lot of print( echo ) statements )

If given the chance to do it again. I would not buy this book.

Good book to start with if you know MVC but don't know ZF. If you're looking to learn the MVC model I'd suggest picking up something else along with book. There is some organization and placement talk but I think it could have been even more in depth. One thing I noticed is he refered to things that were in the sample code and not in the book directly. So if you hadn't downloaded the sample code and worked with it you wouldn't have known what he was talking about. Also the books editing was so so, as there were a good number of typos and thing improper english. But all and all if you want to see how Zend Framework functions it's a great starter piece for that.

Didn't like the way the book is written. I do not understand the point of chapter called 'super ninja secret classes', why not use simply zend_registry? The author sounds so pretentious sometimes, it's really annoying. I've read Zend Framework In Action from Manning and Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP from Apress and there are really ten times better and richer.

I can not compare to other guides, this is not for beginners, it is better if you have already put your hands on ZF. But the book is really great, it taught me a lot of new stuff that I did not know about Zend Framework.

This book is a valuable information source for one of the best web frameworks nowadays.