Talk by Ralph Schindler of Zend, at ZendCon 2009

1. Extending Zend_Tool
By Ralph Schindler - Software Engineer

2. Who Am I?
• Ralph Schindler
• Software Engineer on the Zend Framework Team at Zend
• Email: ralph.schindler@zend.com
• Website: http://ralphschindler.com/
• Project: http://framework.zend.com/
• @ralphschindler (http://twitter.com/ralphschindler)
• Slides at: (provide link)
• Code download link: (provide link)
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3. What’s Zend_Tool All About, Again?
A quick review of where Zend_Tool came from, and where its
going.
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4. What’s Zend_Tool All About, Again?
• Rapid application development of ZF projects
• Tooling framework
Framework for building repeatable tooling tasks
Lots of Built in Features
Easily extensible (what this talk is about!)
• B/c build systems only get us so far
• Tools need to fit in human workflows:
Tool creates project
Human edits project
Tool edits project
Human edits project
... so on and so on ...
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5. What’s Zend_Tool All About, Again?
• Zend_Tool in ZF 1.8
• Zend_Application in 1.8
• Built in project providers:
create projects
create controllers
create actions
create views
create modules
• Zend_Reflection & Zend_CodeGenerator in 1.8
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6. What’s Zend_Tool All About, Again?
• New features in 1.10
New base loader (no more include_path scanning)
Providers
• DbAdapter configuration
• DbTable creation based on database tables
• Layout enabling and creation
(Web client interface)
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7. System Overview
Let’s have a stroll through the Zend_Tool architecture
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8. System Overview
• Two main “components”
Zend_Tool_Framework
• The component responsible for dispatching tooling requests
Zend_Tool_Project
• The component responsible for exposing the “project specific” tooling
capabilities
• Auxiliary Components
Zend_Reflection
Zend_CodeGenerator
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9. System Overview
• Zend_Tool_Framework
Dispatch style framework, designed to abstract enough system
internals to make extensibility easy
• “Flexibility of the tooling dispatch over speed of tooling dispatch”
Broken down into logical sub-parts:
• Client
• Client storage & configuration
• Loader
• Provider & Provider Repository
• Manifest, Manifest Repository & Metadata
• System (Built-in) Providers
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10. System Overview / Zend_Tool_Framework
• Zend_Tool_Framework_Client
Responsibilities:
• Request object
• Response object
• Interactivity support
• Setting up the system registry containing all required objects
• The actual dispatch()-ing
First implementation Zend_Tool_Framework_Client_Console
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11. System Overview / Zend_Tool_Framework
• Zend_Tool_Framework_Client_Storage &
Zend_Tool_Framework_Client_Config
Responsibilities:
• Allowing clients to specify configuration values for the system and
providers to use
• Allowing clients to store artifacts on the filesystem that the system and
providers can consume
– Custom profile files
– Provider specific file formats and metadata
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12. System Overview / Zend_Tool_Framework
• Zend_Tool_Framework_Loader
Responsibilities:
• Load files provided
• Search for classes defined that implement:
– Zend_Tool_Framework_Manifest_Interface
– Zend_Tool_Framework_Provider_Interface
Original loader Zend_Tool_Framework_Loader_IncludePathLoader
New loader Zend_Tool_Framework_Loader_BasicLoader
• Loads explicitly what it was asked to load
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13. System Overview / Zend_Tool_Framework
• Zend_Tool_Framework_Provider & Provider Registry
Responsibilities:
• An interface for defining via a class, dispatch-able actions and
“specialties”
– (Similar to how Action Controllers define actions)
• Registry to maintain instances of all providers available
• Parsing of provider classes for dispatch-able “signatures”
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14. System Overview / Zend_Tool_Framework
• Zend_Tool_Framework_Manifest & Manifest Repository
Responsibilities:
• Manifest can supply a collection of providers, actions and/or metadata
• Registry provides a way to search for metadata in the manifest
• Zend_Tool_Framework_Metadata
Responsibilities:
• Primary use case is to attach “data about data” to instance of a specific
client, a specific provider, or action
– ex: alternate names for each provider based on the command line naming
scheme, OR short names (p for profile)
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15. System Overview
• Zend_Tool_Project
Problem: How to successfully model all the notions of a “project”?
What is a “project”?
• It is a tree of resources (some filesystem / some not)
• For each resource we need to capturing it’s “nature” or “context”
2 main elements
• Zend_Tool_Project_Profile which is a tree of
Zend_Tool_Project_Profile_Resources
• Zend_Tool_Project_Context
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16. System Overview / Zend_Tool_Project
• Zend_Tool_Project_Profile
Responsibilities:
• loading, parsing, serializing and storing a profile file
• Top most node in a “resource tree”
• Zend_Tool_Project_Profile_Resource
Responsibilities:
• The class most responsible for the “where” question of project modeling
• The class most responsible for implementing a node in a “resource tree”
• Extends Resource_Container which is a RecursiveIterator (tree
fundamentals)
• Can create new Resources at specific locations
• Can find resources by name and attribute sets
• Each contains a Zend_Tool_Project_Context object
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17. System Overview / Zend_Tool_Project
• Zend_Tool_Project_Context
Responsibilities
• The class most responsible for the “what” part of project modeling
• Is assigned to a Zend_Tool_Project_Profile_Resource object
– (This is known as “composition”)
• Example contexts:
– Controller file
– View script directory
– View script file
– Model file
– Action method
– ...
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18. Building & extending for Zend_Tool
With so many extension points, where does one start?
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19. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Path of least resistance when learning to extend:
Implement a provider, and be able to call it
Implement a manifest for the provider, and be able to call it
Implement some metadata about provider, and be able to find it
Add complex functionality to provider:
• Selective interactivity (prompting the user)
• Configuration
• Use files from user storage area
Implement a new client interface
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20. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Ensuring our environment is setup
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21. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Basic provider
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22. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Enter new provider in config file
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23. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Checking the provider is available in console help (zf --help)
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24. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Create a manifest for our provider
• Notice we moved the provider inside the Tool namespace
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25. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Run the provider
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26. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Implement metadata attached to provider
• (dynamic metadata)
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27. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Search for metadata
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28. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Add interactivity to provider
• (screenshot)
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29. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Use the config file to retrieve a value
• (screenshot)
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30. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Use the storage area to return a file
• (screenshot)
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31. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Zend_Tool_Project extensions typical tasks
Load existing profile
Search for resources
Create resources & contexts
• Persist attributes
Execute method on resource/contexts, such as create
Store profile after changes
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32. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Code to examine to learn more
Zend_Tool_Framework
• Zend_Tool_Framework_Client & Zend_Tool_Framework_Registry
Zend_Tool_Project
• Zend_Tool_Project_Provider_* (specifically DbAdapter, DbTable)
• Zend_Tool_Project_Context_* (specifically ControllerFile, ViewScriptFile,
DbTableFile)
Zend_Tool_CodeGenerator_Php
• This is needed to generate, and regenerate code in most cases
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33. Building & Extending For Zend_Tool
• Links to example files:
(link here)
• Link to manual & good articles:
http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.tool.framework.html
(more)
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34. Thank You!
Questions? Comments?
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