Tag Archives: tutorial

Returning JSON in a Zend Controller’s Action

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There are three basic ways that you can achieve that. First of all what’s the task? You’ve an array, either from a database result or whatever, and you encode it JSON with Zend_Json::encode($array)

// IndexController.php
class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
	public function indexAction()
	{
		$data = array(...);
 
		$this->view->data = Zend_Json::encode($data);	
	}	
}

The result in general is a specially formatted string. So you can simply set it up to a view member variable and pass it to the view.

// index/index.phtml
echo $this->data

In that case you’ve a .phtml file to maintain, so lets just return the string and “setNoRender” the view in our second try.

// IndexController.php
class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
	public function indexAction()
	{
		$data = array(...);
 
		echo Zend_Json::encode($data);	
 
		$this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);
	}	
}

Actually this is pretty much the most clear solution, but actually you can output the JSON string and simply exit() as it’s shown in our third example.

// IndexController.php
class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
	public function indexAction()
	{
		$data = array(...);
 
		echo Zend_Json::encode($data);	
 
		exit();
	}	
}

Which one is to be used is up to the developer’s choice, mine is the third one as it’s the minimal one.

Cool tutorial about Zend_Paginator

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Every part of Zend Framework is indeed very profesional and useful. But as it happens often some modules are less used than others. Don’t know why but my feeling is that Zend_Paginator, a wonderful tool for pagination is really misunderstood. And in fact it does one of the most common web development tasks. It builds the abstraction for a component that everybody uses in a web project – pagination.

It make sense if there where more tutorials like the following one describing its usage! Many thanks to Joey Rivera for a great tutorial about Zend_Paginator.

Even more this tutorials goes behind the pure usage of the paginator but it helps you understand the integration with one of the most used web apps today – Twitter and another Zend Framework component – Zend_Cache.

joey rivera blog

Zend Framework – quick tutorial (part 3) – front controller plugins

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Why writing a front controller plugin?

Almost every application uses a database connection and acl module. Why doing this in the bootstrap and to mantain many lines of code there, instead of making it clear and mantainable. Of course you can have all these lines of code in your bootstrap, but you know for serious applications that recently will become an obstacle. That’s why Zend Framework allows you to use Front_Controller plugin.

First in you bootstrap add those lines of code

/*
 * add a simple plugin to the controller
 */
 
$front->registerPlugin(new Zend_Controller_Plugin_Init())
      ->registerPlugin(new Zend_Controller_Plugin_Acl());

These two classes (Zend_Controller_Plugin_Init and Zend_Controller_Plugin_Acl) should be placed in two different files with the same names in Controller/Plugins directory under Zend folder, and garantee you that both classes will be instanciated before starting the front controller. Continue reading Zend Framework – quick tutorial (part 3) – front controller plugins →

Semi Transparent PNG8 with no Fireworks

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PNG8 vs other image formats

PNG8 is a rising winner in all the battles between the web formats. It has smaller size than GIF and PNG24, it has alpha channel, and the really big advantage is the semi transparency, which unfortunately degrade in IE6 to a GIF-like full transparency. So there are few very important advantages at all:

1. smaller size than PNG24 and GIF

2. same semi-transparent pixels as PNG24 but with smaller size and no need of alpha filter for IE6, where there’s a GIF like full transparency.

Fireworks and semi transparent pixels in PNG8

The problem is that only Adobe (former Macromedia) Fireworks can export such semi transparent PNG8s, and it’s not free. You may guess PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a Macromedia format which unfortunately turns into closed capability of rendering PNG8 with transparency and with no need of Fireworks. Very sad!

Recent discovery

Finally these days I found a workaround with PNG8 and it’s called pngquant. You can find the tutorial on http://www.ethanandjamie.com/blog/37-user-interface/81-png8-transparency-without-fireworks and everything here’s about the above pngquant.

Now make your website sprites

a PNG8