Phly, boy, phly
the weblog and site of Matthew Weier O'Phinney

I've fielded several questions about setting up an autocompleter with Zend Framework and Dojo, and decided it was time to create a HOWTO on the subject, particularly as there are some nuances you need to pay attention to.

Just about every day, I have an idea for a blog post, and most days, by the end of the day, I just don't have the time or energy to actually write anything up. The inner writer in me screams, "no excuses!" while the aging adult in me whispers, "time for bed, dear."

So, to keep my hand in the game, here are a few things running through my head, or that I'm working on, or that I'll be doing soon.

Today, we released Zend Framework 1.7.0. This release features AMF support, JQuery support, and Twitter support, among numerous other offerings.

For this particular release, we tried very hard to leverage the community. The majority of new features present in 1.7.0 are from community proposals, or were primarily driven by community contributors. For me, this represents a milestone: ZF is now at a stage where fewer and fewer core components are necessary, and the community is able to build off it and add extra value to the project.

I've been getting a lot of interest in my Pastebin demo app -- partly by those wanting to play with Dojo+ZF, partly by those just interested in the application.

I'm constantly trying to improve the application. I've done one webinar and one UnCon session showcasing it, and will be presenting it at Dojo Develper Day in Boston this Monday as well as at php|works later this fall, and want to keep the materials up-to-date and freely available. To this end, I've created a Github repository so you can track the latest developments, as well as pull custom tarballs:

• Pastebin on Github

All patches and feedback are welcome!

I'm a bit late on my ZendCon'08 wrapup; the conference left me both exhausted and with a backlog of email and work that has consumed me since it ended. However, this, too, is good, as it has given me time to reflect... and to finally get my slides up on SlideShare.

ZendCon was alternately exhausting, rewarding, educational, fruitful, infurating, and ultimately wonderful. I've been to every single ZendCon so far -- I started at Zend a scant month before the inaugural event -- and have spoken at each. My first time speaking was a fluke; David Sklar had just started at Ning and had to back out of his "Configuring PHP" tutorial session. Mike Naberezny and I were drafted to take it over, and we had N+1 attendees, where N was the number of speakers. Since that inauspicious beginning, I've gradually taken on more sessions and stuck around to participate in the conference more. I can honestly say that this was the biggest, busiest, and most community focussed ZendCon I can remember.

I have a number of updates and followups, and decided to post them in a single entry.

First off, you may now view my Dojo Webinar online (requires login and registration at zend.com). Attendance was phenomenal, and I've had some really good feedback. If you want to see it live, I'm giving the talk (with revisions!) at the ZendCon UnConference, at Dojo Developer Day Boston later this month, and at php|works in November. I hope to be able to show new functionality at each presentation.

Second, I've completed what I'm calling version 1.0.0 of the pastebin application I demo'd in the webinar. The PHP code is fully unit tested (though I haven't yet delved into using DOH! to test the JS), and incorporates a number of best practices and tips that Pete Higgins from Dojo was kind enough to provide to me. When using a custom build (and I provide a profile for building one), it simply flies.

• Download the pastebin application

The pastebin application showcases a number of features besides Dojo: Zend_Test_PHPUnit was used to test the application, and Zend_Wildfire's FireBug logger and DB profiler are used to provide profiling and debug information.

Finally, ZendCon is next week! I'll be around, but already have a packed schedule (1 tutorial, 2 regular sessions, an UnCon session, a meet-the-developers session... and that's just what I know about!). I look forward to meeting ZF users and developers, though, so feel free to grab me and introduce yourself.

During my Dojo and ZF webinar on Wednesday, Pete Higgins of Dojo fame noted that I could do something different and better on one of my slides.

This particular item had to do with how I was consuming custom Dojo build layers within my code. I contacted him afterwards to find out what he suggested, and did a little playing of my own, and discovered some more Dojo and javascript beauty in the process.

I'm giving a webinar on Zend Framework and Dojo Integration this coming Wednesday, 3 Sept 2008.

I'm particularly excited about this webinar, as I've been developing a sample pastebin application to show off a number of features; the webinar will feature some screencasts showing the new code in action, and promises to be much more dynamic than my typical "bullet point and code" presentations.

I'm also going to show some techniques to use when developing with ZF+Dojo, including how to create custom builds once you're ready to deploy your application (and why you want to do so).

Register today!

We're getting ready to release Zend Framework 1.6.0. However, one important Dijit had to be omitted from the release as I was not able to get it working in time: dijit.Editor.

This dijit is important as it provides an out-of-the-box WYSIWYG editor that you can use with your forms. Unfortunately, actually using it with forms is pretty tricky -- Dojo actually ends up storing content outside the form, which means you need to create a handler that pulls the content into a hidden element when saving.

I have created an implementation, however, that you can start using now, and I'm posting it below. It includes both a view helper for displaying it, as well as a form element for use with Zend_Form.

We had our Zend Framework/Dojo integration QA today. Aside from some connectivity issues at the beginning of the presentation, things went smoothly, and there were some good questions.

A number of people reported missing the slides or that the slides were not advancing. I'm posting them here; they will also be available on the Zend.com webinars page later this week.

ZendFramework_Dojo.ppt

Update: For those who want to view online, you can now do so at SlideShare.