Custom Filter – Excerpt

// To call the filter use
$excerpt = new My_Filter_Excerpt();
$excerpt->filter($str); //$str is the string of text

//Put this in your library
class My_Filter_Excerpt implements Zend_Filter_Interface
{
	protected $_wordCount = 55;

	public function filter($data)
	{
		$sentance = explode(" ", $data);
		if (count($sentance) > $this->_wordCount) {
			$sentance = array_splice($sentance, 0, $this->_wordCount);
			$ellipsis = "…";
		}
		$excerpt = implode(" ", $sentance);
		echo $excerpt . $ellipsis;
	}
}

You can download the source here. Comments and improvements are always welcome.

<?php
/**
 *
 * @author Shaun Farrell
 * @version 1.0
 */
require_once 'Zend/View/Interface.php';

/**
 * Gravatar helper
 *
 * @uses viewHelper Zend_View_Helper
 */
class Zend_View_Helper_Gravatar {

	/**
	 * @var Zend_View_Interface
	 */
	public $view;
	/**
	 *
	 * @var unknown_type
	 */
	protected $_gravatarUrl = "http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?";
	/**
	 *
	 * @var unknown_type
	 */
	protected $_defaultImage = "http://everquest.allakhazam.com/pgfx/item_576.png";

	/**
	 *
	 * @param $emailAddress
	 * @param $size
	 * @param $imgAlt
	 */
	public function gravatar($emailAddress, $size = "40", $imgAlt = "")
	{
		$gravatarId = "gravatar_id=" . md5(strtolower(trim($emailAddress)));
		$url = $this->_gravatarUrl . $gravatarId . "&default=" . urlencode($this->_defaultImage) .
			"&size=" . $size;

		echo "<img src=\"$url\" alt=\"$imgAlt\" />";
		return null;
	}

	/**
	 * Sets the view field
	 * @param $view Zend_View_Interface
	 */
	public function setView(Zend_View_Interface $view) {
		$this->view = $view;
	}
}

Click here to view the embedded video.

Once again you need Firefox, FireBug, and FirePHP. Then in your .ini file add the following lines;

resources.db.isdefaulttableadapter = true
resources.db.params.profiler.enabled = true
resources.db.params.profiler.class = Zend_Db_Profiler_Firebug

The best part about this is that you can add this code only to load based on the environment set in your .htaccess or index.php file in your public folder.

Now its off to read Appendix A “Performance Optimisation For Zend Framework Applications”

You can read my review of Chapter 1 & 2 here.

Seven things about me you may or may not know;

1. I used to swim competitively – I swam competitively for about 13 or 14 years. YMCA swim team (Auburn Stingrays), 4yrs of High School (Auburn High School), and 1 yr of College (SUNY Morrisville). I was a distance swimmer. I once was ranked 18th in Section III (NYS) in the 500 freestyle (20 laps). Our High school team was ranked in the top 5 in New York State. My freshmen year we where ranked 1st.
2. I am/was a Band Geek – I did high school marking band for 5 years (Maroon Vanguard) and 2 years of Drum Corps (Junior Corps DCI Rochester Patriots).
3. I hate watching fake TV, I prefer documentaries or non-fiction stories – Really I love discovery channel and the science channel or TLC.  Anything that’s real.  “How They Do That”, “Dirty Jobs”, and reality TV are my favorites.
4. I am the only one in DC that voted for John McCain – Something like 93% of DC voted for Barack Obama. I guess they will see they were wrong sooner or later
5. I didn’t understand Object Oriented Programing (OOP) until my first job – It’s true! I understand it now though!
6. I wear a suit to work everyday and I am a PHP Developer - Don’t you? I work at the Library of Congress. It looks more professional and people take me more serious. I did a little unprofessional study by myself and now i will wear a suit or tie to work everyday including Friday’s.  No JEANS ever!
7. I grew up in Auburn, New York.  Home of the electric chair, Harriet Tubman, William Seward – dude he purchased Alaska home of Sarah Palin, Theodore Case – he put sound to video a thing now called movies, and many more. Oh yea, Auburn also has some of the only original Tiffany glass left in the world.

I guess that’s it.  Now it’s time to tag 7 more people.  Here they are,

1. Jill Spaeth – College Roommate at Rochester Institute of Technology (@innerspaeth)
2. Justin Thorp – Keith already tagged him but he lives two doors down so I can bug him to get it done. (@thorpus)
3. Wes – My favorite bud in Florida.  I worked with him at SONY.  You all know how much I hate Florida but I love my Wes. (@theonlyub)
4. John Croston – if you are a geek in DC you know him! (@jfcIII)
5. Andrew Wirtanen – My liberal friend from RIT. (@awirtanen)
6. Antoine Butler – Simple just a Rock Star. (@aebsr)
7. I’m going out on a limb and going to pick a the smartest business guy on the web – Jason Calacanis (@JasonCalacanis)

The rules:
1. Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post – some random, some weird.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Chapter one is pretty much an overview of frameworks including Zend Framework and 13 bullet points why you should consider Zend Framework. Very informative and the bullets get right to the point. Some minor tweaking and this chapter could possibly be a pretty good white paper for customers thinking about deploying ZF.

Chapter two get down to the nitty-gritty of frameworks and a little bit of history behind design patterns. A topic that can be very confusing and controversial between developers. Chapter two ends with a quick overview of the Model-View-Controller design pattern in which ZF uses.

Overall the two chapters were very informative.  I am looking forward to the rest of the chapters, including the full chapter about Models in MVC and some in depth ZF Code.  I suggest if you are looking to learn more about Zend Framework you add this to your list of bookmarks as it will be growing regularly.

1. Lose 30lbs.  Really kind of cheesy. This is probably on top of everyone’s list.
2. Become a better software developer.
3. Read at least 5-10 books. I probably finish 1-2 a year.
4. Attend 1-2 PHP Conferences. ZendCon09 and something else.
5. Write some more PHP tutorials and PHP blog posts.
6. Become more involved in the PHP Community. This is my biggest one that I hope to achieve.

If your session is listed but has no link to your slides feel free to send me an email at ZendCon08Slides@kapustabrothers.com.

Tuesday’s are here, Wednesday’s are here, and Thursdays are here.

• PHP Developer Best Practices (SlideShare) – Matthew Weier O’Phinney &Mike Naberezny
• Introduction to Object Oriented PHP – Marcus Börger
• PHP Security Crash Course – Part 1 – Kevin Schroeder
• Zend PHP5 Certification Crash Course – Part 1 – Christian Wenz

• SQL Query Tuning: The legend of the Drunken Query Master (SlideShare) – Jay Pipes
• Quality Assurance in PHP Projects (SlideShare) – Sebastian Bergmann
• PHP Security Crash Course – Part 2 – Kevin Schroeder
• Zend PHP5 Certification Crash Course – Part 2 – Christian Wenz

If your session is listed but has no link to your slides feel free to send me an email at ZendCon08Slides@kapustabrothers.com.

Monday’s are Here, Tuesday’s are here and Wednesday’s are here.

Thursday, September 18th

• Scaling Mozilla’s Websites with PHP – Laura Thomson
• Make your PHP Application Software-as-Service (SaaS) Ready with Parallels Open Platform (SlideShare) – Jack Zubarev
• Building Desktop RIAs with PHP, HTML and Javascript (SlideShare) – Edward Finkler

• What’s New in PHP 5.3 (Panel Discussion) – Andi Gutmans, Stanislav Malyshev, Marcus Borger, Elizabeth M Smith
• Taking it All Offline with SQL Anywhere (SlideShare) – Eric Farrar
• End-to-end Web Testing with Selenium (SlideShare) – Stefan Priebsch
• Solving the C20K Problem: Raising the Bar in PHP Performance and Scalability – Luxi Chidambaran

• How Shaklee Used PHP & Zend to Build a Featherlight Front-end That Just Won’t Go Down – Chris Jones
• I need more servers! What do I do? (Scaling a PHP Application) – Maurice Kherlakian
• Digging Through the Guts of Enterprise PHP: A Case Study (SlideShare) – Shawn M. Lauriat

KEYNOTE: Closing KeyNote with American Cancer Society (SlideShare) – David J. Neff