Domain-driven design with Zend

Question

This question is a continuation of my previous question here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2122850/zend-models-architecture (big thanks to Bill Karwin). I've made some reading including this article

• http://weierophinney.net/matthew/archives/202-Model-Infrastructure.html

and this question

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/373054/how-to-properly-create-domain-using-zend-framework

Now I understand, what domain driven design is. But examples are still very simple and poor. They are based on one table and one model. Now, my question is: do they use Domain Model Design in real-world PHP projects?

I've been looking for some good documentation about this, but I haven't found anything good enough, that explains how to manage several tables and transfer them to Domain Objects. As long as I know, there is Hibernate library, that has this features in Java, but what should I use in PHP (Zend Framework)?

Answer 1

Excellent question. There is indeed a lack of DDD examples with PHP.

There has been a series of articles by Federico Cargnelutti on how to do DDD with PHP and in parts with ZF that might be of interest to you:

• Domain-Driven Design and MVC Architectures
• Domain-Driven Design: Data Access Strategies
• Domain-Driven Design: The Repository
• Domain-Driven Design: Sample Application

Regarding ZF, there has been a proposal for Zend_Entity and Zend_DataMapper for some time, but development on those has been terminated in favor of integrating ZF with Doctrine. Doctrine is also the closest thing to Hibernate in PHP.

When googling for DDD with PHP, there will be a few additional resources, but nothing as comprehensive as the resources available at the official DDD site with code for the App described in Eric Evan's DDD book.