It’s a well know fact that you can preform HTTP requests with CURL. Zend Framework does the same job with Zend_Http. Especially Zend_Http_Client can be used to “replace” the usual client – the browser, and to perform some basic requests.

I’ve seen mostly GET requests, although Zend_Http_Client can perform various requests such as POST as well.

// new HTTP request to some HTTP address
$httpClient = new Zend_Http_Client('http://www.example.com/');
// GET the response
$response = $httpClient->request(Zend_Http_Client::GET);

Here’s a little snippet showing how to POST some data to a server.

// new HTTP request to some HTTP address
$client = new Zend_Http_Client('http://www.example.com/');
// set some parameters
$client->setParameterPost('name', 'value');
// POST request
$response = $client->request(Zend_Http_Client::POST);

Note that the request method returns a response. Thus if you are simulating a form submit action you can “redirect” to the desired page just like the form.

// new HTTP request to some HTTP address
$client = new Zend_Http_Client('http://www.example.com/');
// set some parameters
$client->setParameterPost('name', 'value');
// POST request
$response = $client->request(Zend_Http_Client::POST);
echo $response->location;

You’ve definitely seen the “share a link” screen in Facebook. When you paste a link into the box (fig. 1) and press the “Attach” button you’ll get the prompted cite parsed with a title, description and possibly thumb (fig. 2). This functionality is well known in Facebook, but it appears to be well known also in various social services. In fact Linkedin, Reddit, Dzone‘s bookmarklet use it.

Fist thing to notice is that this information, prompted by Facebook, is the same as the meta tag information. However there is a slight difference.

Facebook prefers for the thumb the image set into the <meta property=”og:image” … />. In the case above this tag appears to be:

And the image pointed in the SRC attribute is exactly the same as the one prompted by Facebook (fig. 3).

First thing to note is that the real thumb is bigger than the thumb shown in Facebook, so Facebook resizes it and the second thing to note is that there are more meta tags of the og:… format.

Meta Tags and The Open Graph Protocol

By default meta tags contain various information about the web page. They are not visible in the webpage, but contain some info about it. The most common meta tags are the title, description and keywords tags. They of course contain the title of the page, not that this can be different from the <title> tag, a short description of the page and some keywords describing the content of the page. They are well known also because the search engines make use of them when trying to collect information about the page and the process of SEO passes through it.

However the default HTML meta tags cannot contain everything. Thus for example you cannot point the preferable thumbnail for a webpage. The solution is the Open Graph Protocol. It comes with meta tags that can contain more and more valuable info. Such a tag is the og:image meta tag. Note that all the Open Graph (og) meta tags are defined by the og: prefix before the entity name. Thus og:image comes for images, while og:longitude for geo positioning.

That’s really useful, but how you can read them?

PHP, Meta Tags and Regexps

When you try to read information from a webpage source the first possible path is by using regular expressions. However PHP is smart enough to offer you some useful functions. Such a function is get_meta_tags(). As you may guess this method reads the meta tags by given URL.

$a = get_meta_tags('http://vimeo.com/10758212');
var_dump($a);

However this method can’t read Open Graph tags. So finally you’ve to use some regexps.

preg_match('//', $source, $matches);

Now you can grab the og:image tag. And even more – grab every image (<img>) from that page.

preg_match_all('/

Related posts:

How to Sanitize User Input in PHP? 
HTML Tags: <base> 
Automatically Upload Images with PHP Directly from the URI 
Download Images with PHP 


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		/2011/01/17/a-memcached-zend_cache/
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		Mon, 17 Jan 2011 13:42:48 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

		/?p=2121
		Continue reading A Memcached Zend_Cache →


Related posts:

Theory of caching. Zend_Cache & Zend Optimizer. 
How to Overcome Zend_Cache_Frontend_Page’s Problem with Cookies 
Setting Up Global Cache in Zend Framework 
MySQL Expressions in Zend Framework 


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				Zend_Cache
Usually Zend_Cache is used to store cache files on the file system, which can be really fast and useful in most of the cases. However there’s a faster cache mechanism and hopefully it’s supported by Zend_Cache as well. This is the Memcached backend.
A Faster Cache
Memcached is a really powerful tool to cache directly into the RAM. First, this tool has nothing to do primary with Zend Framework. It’s a server, usually started on some port, that can be called to store and get things from the memory. This of course is very fast, way faster than the cache in the hard drives.
Zend_Cache and Memcached
Zend_Cache has an interface to work with Memcached which is great as usual. The PHP example of Memcache (note that there are two things Memcache and Memcached, which are slight different) can be found here and as it says:
$memcache = new Memcache;
$memcache->connect('localhost', 11211) or die ("Could not connect");

$version = $memcache->getVersion();
echo "Server's version: ".$version."
\n";

$tmp_object = new stdClass;
$tmp_object->str_attr = 'test';
$tmp_object->int_attr = 123;

$memcache->set('key', $tmp_object, false, 10) or die ("Failed to save data at the server");
echo "Store data in the cache (data will expire in 10 seconds)
\n";

$get_result = $memcache->get('key');
echo "Data from the cache:
\n";

var_dump($get_result);

However this can be coded into a Zend Framework style like that:
$frontend = array('caching' => true, 'lifetime' => 1800, 'automatic_serialization' => true);

$backend = array(
    'servers' =>array(
        array('host' => '127.0.0.1', 'port' => 11211)
    ),
    'compression' => false
);

$cache = Zend_Cache::factory('Core', 'Memcached', $frontend, $backend);

Note that you don’t have the typical “cache_dir”, just because everything’s cached into the memory.
Now you can call the cache as it’s called with the “File” backend interface:
$key = 'mykey';

if (($result = $cache->load($key)) === false) {
	// call the slow database query here ...
	// save in $result
	
	$cache->save($result, $key);	
}

echo $result


Related posts:

Theory of caching. Zend_Cache & Zend Optimizer. 
How to Overcome Zend_Cache_Frontend_Page’s Problem with Cookies 
Setting Up Global Cache in Zend Framework 
MySQL Expressions in Zend Framework 


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		/2010/08/23/can-twitter-replace-the-rss-feed-readers/
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		Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:07:19 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

		/?p=1910
		Continue reading Can Twitter Replace the RSS Feed Readers →


Related posts:

Replace the Broken Images with a Default Image with JavaScript 
Media RSS and ZF – Part 2 
Zend Framework and Media RSS 
Burn Feeds in Zend Framework 


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I’m sure this is not the first time you’ve been asked this question. However there’s nobody today that doesn’t wonder the answer. For me – yes, twitter can replace the RSS feed readers, and NO – feed readers are awsome!
Yes
First of all why do I use a feed reader? I’m simply seeing what’s in it and barely read the article from the reader, but rather I jump to the site, and what’s happening often in twitter is the same scenario, I just see what’s in the tweet and if it seems to be interesting to me I jump to the link (if there’s a link). The good thing is that the tweets are limited and I’m focused. That’s why twitter is my favorite social site. I can follow all of the interesting people I know from their blogs. So perhaps twitter is becoming more useful than the feed readers.
No
In other hand in twitter you’ve to stay all the day long to get all the tweets you need. The timeline is quickly changing and sometimes you get lots of “junk”. While in the feed reader you’ve all the “important” posts as an incoming mail. You cannot miss anything! That’s why I cannot forget the feed readers they are doing a great job!

Related posts:

Replace the Broken Images with a Default Image with JavaScript 
Media RSS and ZF – Part 2 
Zend Framework and Media RSS 
Burn Feeds in Zend Framework 


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		Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:05:05 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

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Related posts:

Setting Up Zend Framework with Modules 
Bind Zend Action with Non-Default View – Part 2 
Default Error Handling in Zend Framework 
Zend Framework: Simple Acl Front Controller Plugin 


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				In the Zend Framework’s documentation there are lots of examples how you can initialize all the actions in a given controller – by simply adding the init() public method in the controller’s code:


But did you know that you can do the same thing with any model in ZF? However you can setup a cache for every method or something else, but definitely it will execute for every method:

Of course that means that directly calling the readAll() function the init() method is called also - automatically.
Conclusion
There are good and bad parts about this. You'll have this code executed for every method and if you have twenty of them and the init() method is practically used for only a couple of the member functions - than this will be useless.

Related posts:

Setting Up Zend Framework with Modules 
Bind Zend Action with Non-Default View – Part 2 
Default Error Handling in Zend Framework 
Zend Framework: Simple Acl Front Controller Plugin 


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		Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:24:46 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

		/?p=1809
		isValid(122)) { ... } which … Continue reading Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists in Zend Framework 1.10+ →


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MySQL Expressions in Zend Framework 
JSON and Zend Framework? – Zend_Json 
Zend Framework: Simple Acl Front Controller Plugin 


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				Zend_Validate_Db_RecodExists is an extremely useful validator in Zend Framework when you’d like to be sure that a give row exists. Now it seems to be even better. Before you could check for a specific row by only comparing a value to the specified column:

$validator = new Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists('db_table_name', 'column_name');
if ($validator->isValid(122)) {
   ...
}

which made it useless when you’d like to compare by more than one column. Now this is changed and you can even exclude given rows by adding an exclude clause. 
$validator = new Zend_Validate_Db_NoRecordExists(
    array(
        'table' => 'users',
        'field' => 'username',
        'exclude' => array(
            'field' => 'id',
            'value' => $user_id
        )
    )
);


Related posts:

Using Zend Framework validators – Zend_Validate_Db_RecordExists 
MySQL Expressions in Zend Framework 
JSON and Zend Framework? – Zend_Json 
Zend Framework: Simple Acl Front Controller Plugin 


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		Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:39:20 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

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		 'login', 'username' => 'xxxxxx@gmail.com', 'password' => 'passxxxxx', 'port' => '587', 'ssl' => 'tls', )); Zend_Mail::setDefaultTransport($mailTransport);


Related posts:

Send Mail with Zend Framework 
Send Html Mails with Zend_Mail 
Send Authenticated POST Request with Zend_Http_Client 
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You know how to setup Zend_Mail with SMTP, but you don’t know how to set it up with GMail! Here’s how to do it. Just follow the instructions 

$mailTransport = new Zend_Mail_Transport_Smtp('smtp.gmail.com', array(
    'auth'     => 'login',
    'username' => 'xxxxxx@gmail.com',
    'password' => 'passxxxxx',
    'port'     => '587',
    'ssl'      => 'tls',
));
Zend_Mail::setDefaultTransport($mailTransport);


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Send Mail with Zend Framework 
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Send Authenticated POST Request with Zend_Http_Client 
Zend Framework: Connect MySQL 


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		Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:05:15 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

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		getResponse()->setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/xml'); $this->view->somevar = 'some value'; echo $this->view->render('index/index.xml'); $this->_helper->layout()->disableLayout(); $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true); } } Step 2 After you’ve setup the xml … Continue reading Media RSS and ZF – Part 2 →


Related posts:

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Bind Zend Action with Non-Default View – Part 2 
Download Files with Zend Framework 
Setting Up Zend Framework with Modules 


]]>
				Here’s the promised chunk of code making the most simple bridge between Zend Framework and Media RSS.

Step 1
Just add a simple action in a controller:
class IndexController extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
	public function indexAction()
	{
	    $this->getResponse()->setHeader('Content-Type', 'application/xml');
	    $this->view->somevar = 'some value';
	
	    echo $this->view->render('index/index.xml');
	
	    $this->_helper->layout()->disableLayout();
	    $this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);
	}
}

Step 2
After you’ve setup the xml file as a view script – you can simply access it as a normal Zend Framework view:

  
   
   ...
   other media rss elements
   ...




Related posts:

Zend Framework and Media RSS 
Bind Zend Action with Non-Default View – Part 2 
Download Files with Zend Framework 
Setting Up Zend Framework with Modules 


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		/2010/07/06/zend-framework-simple-acl-front-controller-plugin/
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		Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:00:59 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

		/?p=1771
		Continue reading Zend Framework: Simple Acl Front Controller Plugin →


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Setting Up Zend Framework with Modules 
Setting Up Global Cache in Zend Framework 
JSON and Zend Framework? – Zend_Json 


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Almost every web site need some abstraction over the access control list (ACL) to grant access of its users. As usual Zend Framework has quite good mechanism to deal with this – Zend_Acl.
Out in the web there are a lot of resources about Zend_Acl’s usage, so I ain’t going to cover it one more time, but simply copy/paste a very small front controller plugin implementing the basic usage of Zend_Acl.
Note that instead of defining the __construct() here is called preDispatch where the request is passed as a parameter. However only by copy pasting not every answer will be given. That’s why I’m going to write more about Zend_Acl in my future posts, for now only the source code:
add(new Zend_Acl_Resource('index'))
            ->add(new Zend_Acl_Resource('create'))
            ->add(new Zend_Acl_Resource('read'))
            ->add(new Zend_Acl_Resource('update'))
            ->add(new Zend_Acl_Resource('delete'));

        // define roles
        $acl->addRole(new Zend_Acl_Role('guest'))
            ->addRole(new Zend_Acl_Role('admin'));

        // define privileges
        $acl->allow('guest', array('index', 'read'))
            ->allow('admin');

        // setup acl in the registry for more
        Zend_Registry::set('acl', $acl);

        // check permissions
        if (!$acl->isAllowed('guest', $request->getActionName())) {
            $request->setControllerName('error');
            $request->setActionName('error');
        }
    }
}


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Zend Framework – quick tutorial (part 3) – front controller plugins 
Setting Up Zend Framework with Modules 
Setting Up Global Cache in Zend Framework 
JSON and Zend Framework? – Zend_Json 


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		Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:26:41 +0000
		
				
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		
		

		/?p=1664
		Continue reading Bind Zend Action with Non-Default View – Part 2 →


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Bind Zend Action with Non-Default View 
Zend Framework: Inject JavaScript Code in a Action/View 
Escaping strings in a Zend Framework view. Prevent unclosed tags! 
Inline Scripts with Zend_View_Helper_InlineScript 


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				Typical Setup
Typically Zend Framework is setup to bind every controller’s action to a specific view. The names of the action and the view script must be the same, or at least must be similar – following the ZF’s convention.
Thus if you name an action, let’s say, indexAction(), you’ve to create an index.phtml file into the views/scripts/index/ folder. Let me remind you that this is what is called a typical setup, but this may vary from one installation to another.
Thus everything’s fine and the MVC does its best. After the user requests a specific uri, the framework parses it and finds the controller, than the action and than the view script – and there is a view script for every single action.

When there are two or more actions – there are two or more .phtml (view scripts) files.

Some Exceptions
Sometimes you have very similar logic, but very different markup between two actions. As the logic goes to the controller/action and the markup into the view, the question is can you simply have one action in the controller, but with two different .phtml file as a view scripts?  Of course switching between those two (or more) with some conditionals.
Solution No. 1
However once I posted a simple, and working, solution. There you have again two actions and two scripts:
view->title = "My Title";
		
		// if the logic requires a different markup
		// simply redirect to another view
		if (some_expression) {
			$this->_forward('second');	
		}	
	}
	
	public function secondAction()
	{}
}

// in the application/views/scripts/index
// 1. first.phtml
title ?>

// 2. second.phtml
title ?>

As you can see in the second action there’s no logic – it’s only serving the role of a bridge between the views. Everything is setup into the first action, but the second action is doing the relation with the second.phtml view script.
Solution No. 2
However there’s another solution with only one action and two scripts which makes something like that shown on the diagram bellow:

The only thing to do is to add some code to your action:
view->title = "My Title";
		
		// if the logic requires a different markup
		// simply redirect to another view
		if (some_expression) {
			echo $this->view->render('index/second.phtml');
			$this->_helper->viewRenderer->setNoRender(true);
		}	
	}
}

// in the application/views/scripts/index
// 1. first.phtml
title ?>

// 2. second.phtml
title ?>

Note that you’ve to setNoRender on the view renderer once you render the other script!

Related posts:

Bind Zend Action with Non-Default View 
Zend Framework: Inject JavaScript Code in a Action/View 
Escaping strings in a Zend Framework view. Prevent unclosed tags! 
Inline Scripts with Zend_View_Helper_InlineScript 


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