Understanding Zend Framework’s Plugin: Front Controller Plugin, Controller Action Helper, View Helper, Resource Plugin...(Part One)

This post is the first of three posts on Zend Framework's plugin. It would give a quick overview of the concepts of Plugins in Zend Framework. The aim is to provide an easy and short explanation of various plugin related concepts in zend framework; making it easy for a new comer to get up and running in no tim.

Usually, after getting the basics of Zend framework; that is: setting up your projects, using the Zend_Tool,  using controllers and views etc, more often than not, the next points of confusion for the new user usually stems from having to grapple with the various minor concepts within Zend framework.

An example of these concepts is the idea of Plugins. Plugins by itself is a simple concept right? But within Zend Framework, there are so many variant of plugins that it could quickly get perplexing to a new user.

What is a Front Controller Plugin? What is a Resource Plugin? What about our View Helpers? How are these different from Controller Action Helper? Wait. There is a Controller Action Helper? How is it different from our Front Controller Plugin? As you see...it could get confusing pretty fast.

Like I said in my previous post on how to set up a modular application structure, zend framework itself is not inherently difficult, just that it could take a while to wrap a head around how everything fits together, plus the paucity of useful and up to date resources out there does nothing to help matters.

Introduction to Git and GitHub

A presentation I made for an even earlier this year on Git. The presentation covers the basic work flow of init, clone, add, commit and push. Other commands like git remote, git pull etc are briefly touched.

Introduction to git and github from Aderemi Dadepo