ZF 4 Business

Family Map now available as Open Source Software

Get your copy of Family Map Community Edition for your school for free!

ZF4 Family Map is released under the GNU Affero General Public License V3

Source Code: GitHub

Admin/User Documentation: Family Map Docs

Better jQuery support for Zend Framework

The ZendX extension library provides some support for integrating jQuery into you application but when it comes to providing form element support it falls down in one significant area. The setting of parameters passed to the javascript initialisation does not account for function declarations in the form element, requiring the developer to write both an element definition and then use jQuery in the raw to add any callback functions for the element.

This article describes a way of extending ZendX_JQuery to add this support, thus allowing the developer to write everything required to support the form element within the body of the PHP code itself. I am assuming the reader has some familiarity with both jQuery and the Zend_Form_Element object class.

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Beta testers wanted

We are seeking UK based Surestart, Infant and Primary schools to get Family Map to its next milestone.

ZF4 are offering the first 5 early adopters a finance free package that will allow them to use the system free for a year followed by 1/2 price subscription for the second year.

Don't let yourself be driven into the arms of high priced software vendors. Family Map is aimed at putting more of your income stream where it belongs, in the minds of the children.

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Family Map is born

Over the last 9 months or so we've been working with a local school, 'Woodnewton - a learning community'. Out of this work has grown a partnership between ZF4 and the school, of which 'Family Map' is the first fruit.
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Zend Controller Plugins

The Zend Controller plugin pattern is only half baked. Nowhere does the docs (nor an intensive search through the API) reveal how you configure a plugin with options. Indeed the Plugin Broker simply instantiates the plugin class and passes no parameters. Fine if your plugin needs no config. Unfortunately if it does, then you are stuck as to how to bring it in other than reading in yet another config file. The rest of this article demonstrates a quick method for creating configurable plugins, using Zend Framework itself to do the dirty work.
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A simple Data Model Object

The Zend Framework (ZF) provides a neat, well tested database manipulation framework with its Zend_Db class hierarchy but you still have to do a lot of work to make it usable. You can of course use one of the ORM families such as Doctrine but for the vast majority of situations they really are overkill. This article describes a simple extension to Zend_Db_Table that will allow you reuse the derived class for a large number of situations.
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Welcome to ZF4 Business

ZF4 Business is the consultancy operation of Ashley Kitson, a seasoned PHP developer, who utilises the Zend Framework amongst other technologies to engineer web based business solutions for his clients, whether they are internal or public facing.