I've started using Zend Framework and Studio for my projects and would like to hear from those who already use it what to expect. I'm not interested so much in the good things because these can be marketing messages. I want to know about the things that are not so good or are annoying so I can decide for myself if they matter enough to me. Thanks for all your input.
But isn't ZF modular. Yes, I upload it to my server, but it just sits there, and I can use as few or as many of its classes as I need? The only thing I guess it adds by default is the MVC application architecture, but that's a good thing and needed start for me since I wouldn't know how to implement it myself. Can you clarify specifically how being huge affects my application in a bad way.
jblue
2010-09-15 20:18:41
Wrikken
2010-09-15 21:45:56
From the book "Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development" page 10: rephrased for clarity `There are, of course, disadvantages to MVC and situations where it should not be used. If the application is simple, then there would be no point in using MVC, as the overhead created by the MVC implementation outweighs the benefit.` It means MVC has an overhead. It's worth it for an application that needs it, but is not worth it for a small application.
jblue
2010-09-16 01:27:28
+3
A:
I haven't used it for a while but it always used to have a bit of a memory overhead.
This was caused be the huge number of classes that the framework included for every request.
Hobozilla
2010-09-15 20:15:52
Can this be mitigated with something like APC? Or is it just a fact of life?
Icode4food
2010-09-15 20:17:22
Using APC does help with speed up the application as the classes are cached but it does not help with memory usage.It is still a good idea to use something like APC
Hobozilla
2010-09-15 20:22:59
+6
A:
Its a pretty good learning curve, with pretty limited (awful) documentation for most developers. Be prepared for that, as it will take most developers a good few weeks + to get a handle on it and how to do things "properly".
But I guess to say that will probably be the case with any framework. I just know that was a huge task to learn, and I am still learning. So doing something I have not done before with ZF, although I may have done this separately on another project, tends to take a bit more time.
Brad F Jacobs
2010-09-15 20:19:24
Learning curve is the main obstacle, but there are some books that help. Personally I can recommend Zend Framework 1.8 Web Application Development (it's not outdated despite the 1.8 version number in the title)
Jani Hartikainen
2010-09-15 20:38:26
+1 on the documentation. Very formal and tight contra community driven and open.
chelmertz
2010-09-15 21:58:45
+3
A:
I'm using ZF for two years now and I'm quite happy with it. Just few things:
- documentation is good for beginners but in time you will see that it misses a lot
- don't use ZF without solution like APC / eAccelerator
- test everything carefully when you update to new version of ZF. Sometimes there are radical changes in ZF behaviour
Piotr Pankowski
2010-09-15 20:30:14
I'd argue the opposite about the documentation. I think its more targetted at intermediate -> advanced users. Its often lacking in important details and/or out-of-date
seengee
2010-09-15 21:22:51
+1
A:
A couple of notes from my experience:
- Not well suited for rapid development ala Rails or Django
- No ORM
- When developers ignore the suggested "Zend" way of doing things it can get very messy
- It's not as loosely coupled as advertised. Just try making a Zend Framework MVC project without using Zend Loader.
- Slower than some other frameworks (but fast enough for 90% of websites, DB is almost always the bottleneck anyway)
- I've found the Zend Forms to be clunky and slow to implement
- Last I used it, the Zend_Feed_Writer class didn't seem to work right
Joshmaker
2010-09-16 14:18:23