By doing some research, one of the disadvantages often reported about Zend Framework
is the amount of work required to get off the ground. For me this could be addressed if ZF
had strong model
and backend interface
generators like Symfony does. I have been looking for those and here is what I found:
Model generators
http://code.google.com/p/zend-db-model-generator/: looks like official one, based on user feedback, the documentation seems to be awful though.
http://code.google.com/p/zend-model-generator/: seems quite advanced. updated 3 months ago.
https://github.com/inxilpro/Galahad-FE/: not updated in 2 years, looks dead.
https://github.com/codeinchaos/zend-model-generator/blob/master/generate.php: single php file, could be interesting to use as basis and extend as needed.
Backend interfaces
As usual one can use database administration tools
http://www.phpmyadmin.net: quite complete with plenty of new features since 3.5. Hard to extend.
http://www.adminer.org/: single-file backend interface. Quite complete. The use of plugins seems to make extending functionality easy.
Backend interface generators
http://zfdatagrid.com/grid/default/site/crud which comes from what looks like a very active
ZF
related project: http://code.google.com/p/zfdatagrid/.http://www.koala-framework.org/: I've recently come across this framework which allows you to create "desktop-like" applications around Zend, which one could use to create a backend interface.
Setting up the interface seems to be quite easy, for instance here is how you would display a form to edit contacts on the same page as you would edit members:
<?php
class MemberContacts extends Kwf_Model_Db
{
protected $_table = 'member_contacts';
protected $_referenceMap = array(
'Member' => array(
'column' => 'member_id',
'refModelClass' => 'Members',
)
);
}
?>
A demo of Koala frameworks is available. To be honest it looks quite impressive.
Q: Which model generators and backend interface (generators) do you use for Zend and why?