On Monday, the Zend Framework team announced the first production release of its open source, community-driven framework. I’ve watched this framework grow since version 0.2.0 and many many things have changed. I have actually been using the framework in production since version 0.6.0. Well, I shouldn’t say I’ve been using the whole framework. There are pieces of it which have proven very useful since almost its conception. For instance, we’ve already relied heavily on its front controller, session handling, authentication, and several other components. So far though, we’ve been hesitant to rely too much on the framework as a whole, due to the fact that it has been somewhat of a moving target. Now that the framework is officially released, the developers have an obligation to keep a stable API, so we’ll likely be integrating it into our projects quite a bit more. I imagine that for those same reasons, other companies will start using it as well. This means we’ll likely see more (or at least better) documentation, tutorials, and innovation surrounding this framework.
The thing I’ve always loved about this framework is that it doesn’t lock you into using more than you want to. For instance, I’ve never cared for the framework’s input validation components, but since the framework is so loosely coupled, it is trivial for me to use a home-baked solution. The same goes for its mail component. I have been a happy swiftmailer user for almost a year now, and I don’t plan on abandoning it simply because my framework has its own mail component. Luckily, this framework doesn’t make me!
Andi Gutmans (co-founder of Zend) has written a blog post regarding the release as well, and I imagine he has significantly more beneficial information, so be sure to check that out.
You can download the new release or even help with a future one at the framework’s homepage. Oh, and happy Zend Frameworking!