Evolving business trends and shifts in customer preferences has necessitated the creation of more dynamic websites against static ones. Dynamic websites are written mostly in ‘PHP’ and ‘Javascript’. Though PHP codes can be written directly in a text editor, there are quite a few tools available which are based on PHP and aim to ease the web development process.

Zend Framework 2 is an open-source which is used for web development using PHP 5.3+. Combining a wide array of components, Zend Framework 2 forms a very strong tool for web development.

Zend Framework 2.2.2 – The changes

Zend Technologies has recently released Zend framework 2.2.2. The update brings over 60 changes in the framework to ease and simplify the process of web development using this particular framework. A few major points to note in this update include

1. Update to the validator plugin manager which now includes a Phone number validator,
2. Changing of the abstract methods to non-abstract in ‘AbstractRestfulController’ and edited to set a 405 status (‘Method not allowed’)
3. The gzip-encoded bodies will no longer be double decoded by the cURL adapter for ZendHttp
4. The headlink() method to the Headlink View helper to match its usage to the documentation.
5. Spelling update to the function ‘GetMayorVersion’ to ‘GetMajorVersion’
6. Setup() and tearDown() has updated protection so that the arguments can be changed from ‘protected’ to ‘public’ and vice-versa

All of these changes were made as responses to requests or issues raised by Zend framework users on ‘Github’. Some of the major areas in development where the update shows an impact are – feature improvements, module managers and additional plugins.

What happens to ZF1?

The Zend Framework 1 earlier made way for Zend framework 2. With more bugs to fix and user suggestions to implements, the company has now released Zend Framework 2.2.2. But even after these updates and subsequent releases, the company plans to provide support and maintenance on ZF1 till early 2014 thus providing time to developers to carry out the technological transition from ZF1 to ZF 2.2.2.