Zend Framework 2 Application Development Paperback – October 25, 2013

Of all the books etc on ZF 2, available on kindle. This is the best. Would recommend for junior programmers to [urchase this with Zend Framework 2 by Example.Each and every example in this book by Christopher actually works, better than what you may have had in the past. I like his writing style, and how the book was put together.We do need however more manuals on the ZF 2 API. It is huge, and not enough available

Great booki

It is extremely frustrating to try to actually follow the development of the application by working through the code as presented in this book. Too often, only isolated fragments of the code are shown in the book, leaving you to guess sometimes even into which function they should be inserted.Other times, important details aren't mentioned. One example: the "User.php" (a data mapper, or "Entity"; page 80-81) shows the code through the declaration of its protected properties and then says, "After this the file just contains getters and setters..." That's fine; Netbeans/Eclipse will generate these for me. But what it won't do is generate the getGenderString() method that is also required but not mentioned by the author. Yes, it's a getter, too, but not a standard one. A heads-up on that would have been nice.The author seems to have revised the application code at some point, so that User entity appears in a Users module in chapter 4, it's somehow migrated to a Wall module in chapter 5 without comment or explanation. The chapter 5 code shows it in the corresponding namespace, but doesn't mention that you'll have to move the file for autoload to work.So, you're left with few options for getting this working other than to just downloading the code from the publisher and dumping it onto the server. Doing so removes a lot of the opportunity to learn from this example.The barely-readable errata page on the publisher's site is up to a dozen items and has been adding a few each of the past couple weeks. Hopefully, this will lead to a "reprinting" that is more usable. The book has potential and is among the most current written about Zend Framework, but it needs a lot of help at the moment.

This book requires you to download the publisher provided source code. If you're not using vagrant it will also be a struggle. That being said, this is the best ZF2 how-to for real world first timers like myself. I'd highly recommend starting (!) from here, along with a PHP book.Pros : Uses Vagrant to ease development, clear concise chapters that modularize what you're adding and why. The Author responds to your emails! I just really enjoyed the book after I got the idea that I cannot just read the book and write down the code in the physical pages, I needed to download the sourcecode from the publisher.Cons : Without the source code, this book is impossible. Typos and unclear writings leave you wondering what code snippet goes where.Note : Now that Apigility is nearing release.. this book is needing a rewrite. You should be designing the API with the API-focused ZF2 project.. it gives you a great starting point for API's including versioning, pagination, and OAuth 2.0.. I can understand why the author didn't use it, because this book pre-dates that project.

This book is one of the worst programming books I've read. Having errors everywhere isn't even the real problem. The real problem is that the source code snippets are isolated from the rest of the code and its not explained what lines of code belong to which function or even to which file. Also, the project requires two Zend installations and the author switches between the two without warning.For example, there are two ZF2 installations called "client" and "api". ZF2 development is done by creating modules in the top level Module folder of each installation. Now in chapter 4 the author says, "The Api module does this job but the contents of it are still complex for us and we will see how the concepts work later on. For now just trust me and use the code." You tell me, which ZF2 installation are you using now, and which module are you developing now? Does the "Api module" the author refers to here refer the the Api module in the "client" ZF2 installation or the Api module in the "api" ZF2 installation? Or is the author using the term "module" to refer to one of the ZF2 installations.This book is very confusing, hard to follow, and I don't see why two ZF2 installations are needed for one application.