It's been a while since David Sklar called out to let a thousand string concatenations bloom. That discussion produced some entertaining suggestions for putting strings together such as using preg_replace and calling out to MySQL with SELECT CONCAT.

Mike goes with a bit different media of choice - the filesystem functions and streams. One example opens a file, writes to the file then rewinds back to the beginning of the stream. He modified this to make it slightly more useful (writing to memory not the file system) and shows how it could be used to make a temporary stream for testing purposes.

As part of the framework we use at work, we borrow what we feel are the best components out there and logging is a key part of that. Logging should be simple to setup, easy to use and should minimize work on the developer. After all, you are going to do a lot of logging, right?

He shows how, with a few changes to how they log (creation of a custom logger), it reduces the number of calls to load a Zend_Registry object each time something needs to be recorded. His code is included in the post along with examples of it in action.

When Stefan asked me to write about the Zend Framework, I decided I would avoid copy-able code, simply because it doesn't re-enforce good software design. [...] The following is a brief summary of 4 components in the Zend Framework: Zend_Loader, Zend_Log, Zend_Config and Zend_Registry.

For each of the four components, he looks at how they can be used (reason why), some good and bad things about them and he includes some pseudocode to show the format for its use.

The short answer to is Zend_Log good (enough): yes; the long answer, no. First off, it does what it needs to do without too much fuss [...] but... It has a few fatal flaws in my opinion.

While he found the simplicity of the component nice, the flaws seemed to outweigh the good. Problems like code redundancy and a simple thing like writing out to the log file isn't handled well (can't be accessed directly, only through the interface - slower in the long run?). He's included some tests to check out the difference.

Whilst touring the web I found an interesting project for turning Apache Web Server log files into RSS feeds. This approach can be adjusted to monitor the maintenance needs of a web application deployed on an assumed productive system. Therefor a XML capable Zend_Log instance will be set up and the resulting log file will be transformed into a RSS feed via a custom Action Helper wrapping a XSLT transfomation.

He sets up the XML logger first, using the Zend_Log, Zend_Log_Writer_Stream and Zend_Log_Formatter_Xml to create the XML output from the logging. Then, with the help of the custom helper - Recordshelf_Controller_Action_Helper_Xslt - he reformats the XML output into an RSS feed ready for public consumption. (There's even a screenshot of what it might look like in a feed reader).

The first post provides two bits of code to show the creation of the filter, one to create the interface and the other to show it in action. He uses it to log the visitors IP address and hostname along with a custom message and a priority for the message.

In the second post he steps back and takes a more overall view of the component. He looks at how it works, features it offers and, of course, how to create a custom filter and use it in your application. He logs the same information as mentioned above and stores it out in an XML-based format.

This is an update to the Zend Framework Beta Release. The Zend Framework developers have been working very hard to improve the quality every week, and this Beta Refresh release includes their efforts so far. There have been 81 issues fixes since the 0.9.1 release.

There will be at least one more Beta Release, scheduled about April 20. We will continue to have Beta Releases until we feel the product is ready for a 1.0 Release Candidate.

The Changelog has a complete list of the issues fixed and items updated but two of the notables listed are a "significant update" to the Zend_Log component to make it more object-oriented and a move for Zend_Memory to the Core of the framework.