Davey Shafik's Pixelated Dreams

For those of you who want to participate in the ZCEGuide.com Zend Framework Proposal competition, the deadline of October 31st is fast approaching.

So be sure to enter today!

- Davey

php|architect has announced the php|tek 2007 conference which will be held in Chicago, May 16th-18th, 2007. php|architect conferences, if you have never been, are an absolute blast. I went to php|works in Toronto in '05, and php|tek in Orlando this past April, and the people and the facilities, and of course the talks and the beer are first rate

If, like me, you haven't been to Chicago, you might be wondering "WTH is in Chicago?!", well, it is the third largest city in the US (population) and apparently has a wonderful selection of Museums, a great Zoo, and the the highest density of "Frank Lloyd Wright" homes in the US. On top of that, its on Lake Michigan, and is accessible via the second most busy airport in the US, "Chicago O'Hare Airport", so you can probably get a direct flight from most anywhere in North America (2.5hrs from Tampa -> Chicago, $193/per adult; American Airlines @ expedia.com).

I will be submitting papers, and hopefully be presenting there, if not I will most likely go just to hang out anyhow

- Davey

I know some people think I've forgotten my blog, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is however, a good reason I don't blog so much anymore, let me try to explain:

I don't have good stuff to blog about. Since the inception of my blog, I've tried to blog good stuff, that is, stuff that explains something new I came across, that I think a lot of people don't know (those "Ah-hah!" moments), or stuff that teaches people stuff I take for granted. For the last few months, I have been so busy at work, working on a new minor (major.minor.micro) version, with some very complex new features. But whilst the features are complex, they isn't anything ground-breaking (though the UI is awesome), so nothing to blog there. On top of that, the only project I was working on outside of work, was my book.

Now I am working on Web Services for the Zend Framework, but its so simple to use, there's only so much to blog there

So thats why I'm not blogging so much anymore. There are however several projects on the horizon, that should be very interesting, so I will be blogging more - just bear with me.

- Davey

I am very proud and delighted to be able to tell you all that php|architect has now released the "php|architect's Zend PHP 5 Certification Study Guide".

The reason I am so truly happy about this, is because, I, with help from Ben Ramsey, wrote the book. This is the reason behind my recent absence. It has been an excellent opportunity for me, and though it was hard work, it was still a lot of fun.

But, this isn't all, to accompany the book, I have also released ZCEGuide.com, the official book site. The best thing about this, as far as you're concerned, is that we are holding a competition to win, not just a copy of the book but a whole host of other prizes. We have 1 copy of Zend Studio Professional, 1 signed copy of the book, 2 exam vouchers (which entitles two people to take the exam once at no cost!), and 3 1 year subscriptions to php|architect.

All you have to do, is participate in the Zend Framework. In particular, new idea proposals. Our panel of judges will evaluate all of the proposals submitted and will pick 3 winners who will share the loot mentioned above.

For more information on the book, the authors, a sample chapter and of course, the competition, head to ZCEGuide.com.

And don't forget, buy the book! - if you win, I'll pay you back for it - can't get fairer than that!

- Davey

I have been working closely with Matthew Weier O'Phinney for the last week on bringing my Zend_Service_Server proposal to fruition.

There have been several changes, but the core has not moved too far. Matthew, Andi and I have decided that we will first implement the different server/client libraries, that is:

• Zend_Rest_Server and Zend_Rest_Client
• Zend_XmlRpc_Server and Zend_XmlRpc_Client (already released)

In addition to this, there will be a major WSDL supplement for the SOAP extension, this includes:

• Zend_Soap_Wsdl - Generic WSDL creation, manual calls to create a custom WSDL
• Zend_Soap_Wsdl_Parser - WSDL Parser
• Zend_Soap_Wsdl_CodeGenerator (name pending) - WSDL -> PHP Code Skeleton
• Zend_Soap_AutoDiscover - Following the same API as the servers above, this will allow you to automatically generate WSDL from a PHP class or functions.

The core to all of these is found under Zend_Server, these are:

• Zend_Server_Reflection - PHP Class and Function Reflection, including docblock parses and the ability to serialize for caching
• Zend_Server_Interface - Make a compatible Server of your own
• Zend_Server_Abstract - Some stuff you'll almost always need in a server

Furthermore, as an exercise today I spent an entire 20 minutes implementing Zend_Json_Server which works in the same way, register any normal class or functions and any responses will be returned as JSON. What this means is it is now super easy to deploy and utilize Server to Server SOAP/XML-RPC/REST services, and also Client to Server JSON or REST services - all with very little work. Code Re-use is definitely utilized to the maximum here.

We are still working out the finalities with Zend_Server_Reflection and also the Zend_Service_Server replacement, that is the unified API that will automatically dispatch to any of these services.

The final part of this will be the automated HTML documentation, based on the reflection. This will be optional to expose (defaults to on), but a great way to simply code and forget. Documentation is probably the single most important part of an external API - if nobody knows how to use it, well, then it's just pointless.

This is very exciting for me, I hope others will see this a major step forward for "Enterprise" solutions.

- Davey