Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development

This books starts very well but it gets way too theoretical way too fast. For a good 130 pages this book gives you a lot of information about ZF's classes and how to theoretically instantiate them and use them but the examples are shown out of context so you're left wondering where that code snippet you've just read would go to (Bootstrap, Application, Controller, etc). And there are no real practical examples in the first 130 pages or so. For example, you get to know how to fully customize every aspect of the MVC classes but you don't get to use most of what you've learned until 100 pages later. It's very hard to grasp all that info without seeing it in action. Specially if the framework's concepts are new to you.

A good example of how complex this book can get is the chapter on creating the Model for the included storefront project. The chapter guides you through creating a very complex model (classes that inherit from classes that inherit from classes, so and so on) right off the bat. There is no progressive curve, so I guess pedagogically this book is on the poor side.

On the other hand, the author DOES know what he's talking about and takes his time to explain WHY he does what he does which is very important in these kinds of books.

This is definitely not a light reading and took me a couple of re-reads to understand most of the stuff. Wouldn't recommended it as a first view into ZF though.

If you've read the Symfony Framework documentation intro project Jobeet (Symfony 1.4 at the time of this writing), then you've read the complete opposite of this book; they give you a VERY progressive HOWs and usually not the WHYs. This book give you a very mature yet simple project ready for you to copy paste but you're left to digest it at your own pace (if you can!).

For anyone that's tried to dive into the zend framework, few have said it's easy. the zend framework is so loosely coupled and flexible in it's use, it's very difficult for anyone to write a book on it. I think this author did a good job and walking your through building an ecommerce store that uses the zend framework and mvc architecture. With that said, be prepared, you will be knee deep in zend, and it can be overwhelming for the faint at heart. This book is not a breeze through and jump around type of book... you need to follow the chapters, and you need to take your time. To be very honest, after going through this book, it inspired me to use codeigniter more then zend framework... but it's not the books fault.

If you are PHP Programmer and not convinced for using a ZF. Just trust me, try understand Domain Model in the Storefront shop, Keith'a way is the best way for using ZF.

I really enjoyed this book. I'm new to Zend, and bought some books that felt over my head. This book has so much information that is overwhelming. However, almost everything is very well explained, and the available source code works great even with a more recent version of Zend. I'm sure I'll still find things to learn in my third or forth read. One thing essential for me was to install an IDE to manage all files in the project (I choose Eclipse-Helios).

I usually wouldn't pick a PACKT book for technical information, but reading after this book I might consider other books they print. Thank you Mr. Pope.

I love it, a great resource for the Zend Framework, the first 2 chapters worth the purchase.

You can find very well explained how the ZF works and how to extend its functionality.

As of this writing, ZF is on version 1.10 but the book is still very very useful to understand its structure and how powerful is.

In my opinion the Zend Framework is the best tool for large scale websites(using PHP) and this book a must have for any developer interesting in the topic.