In this new post to his site Rob Allen shows you how to implement a simple logging method for catching exceptions in your Zend Framework 2 application.

I recently had a problem with a ZF2 based website where users were reporting seeing the error page displayed, but I couldn't reproduce in testing. To find this problem I decided to log every exception to a file so I could then go back and work out what was happening. In a standard ZF2 application, the easiest way to do this is to add a listener to the 'dispatch.error' event and log using ZendLog.

He uses an event listener to attach a service that contains a "logException" method. This method uses the ZendLog component to write out the error message to a local log file including a backtrace of where the issue occurred.

The PHP Podcast (from Zend) has posted its second episode - Episode #2, an interview with Adam Culp who recently joined the team at Zend and is a organizer for the South Florida PHP User Group.

In this episode we talk to Adam Culp on his very first day as a Zend employee. We talk about PHP community and Adam's decision to move from the realm of independent consultant to Zender! Adam is the organizer of SunshinePHP, PHP Guru and joining the Zend Professional Services Team.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 directly. You can also subscribe to their feed of you want this and future episodes pulled automatically.

On 7PHP.com there's a new post that interviews a PHP community member, Eric Hogue, about his experience with the Zend Certified Engineer exam.

This is the 3rd set of Zend Certification Tips and Advice to help anyone taking either of the two Zend Exams powered by Zend Technologies: the Zend PHP Certification Exam and/or the Zend Framework Certification Exam. The aim being to help people who want to sit for those exams and inform them what it is all about & what to expect by hearing it from (pro) PHP Guys who have already been through it, that is => Hear It From Zend Certified Engineers!

He starts off with some general questions to Eric about the exam and its structure and how he prepared himself for it. He mentions some of the resources he used to study and what kind of topics to pay attention to. There's also a few quotes included at the end giving another perspective on the exam (specifically, some frustrations).

On Reddit's PHP section there's a discussion happening about dependency injection versus service locators in two popular PHP frameworks - Zend Framework 2 and Symfony 2 (and how they're not really DI at all).

Both ZF2 and Symfony 2 offer the same behavior: if I'm in a controller, and I want to use a service, I have to get it from the container with $this->get('my_service'). As such, the controller is not using DI, this is the service locator pattern. Controllers become more difficult to tests because of that, and they depend on the container now. I wonder why both frameworks didn't go further: why not treat controllers like services and use dependency injection on them. In other words: if a controller needs a service "A", then it should get it in the constructor, or through setter/property injection.

The comments talk some about the "controller from the DI container" idea, some other ways around the problem and some clarification as to what the frameworks are actually doing related to the container injection.

Rob Allen previously posted about some of his practices around the different types of objects in the model layer of his Zend Framework 2 applications. In this latest post he follows up and shares some example code for the different types.

I previously talked about the terms I use for objects in the model layer and now it's time to put some code on those bones. Note that,as always, all code here is example code and not production-ready.

He includes sample classes related to his "books" examples - a "book" entity (with title, author, id and ISBN), a mapper object to load/save/delete the entity and a service object that provides an interface for the entity to the rest of the application.

The first episode of a new PHP-related podcast, the "PHP Podcast" produced by Zend, has been released. This first episode, hosted by Joe Stagner features a well-known PHPer, Cal Evans.

Cal Evans has been referred to as "The Ubiquitous Face of the PHP Community". That's made Cal an obvious choice for the first guest on the PHPPodcast. In this episode we chat about the evolving face of the PHP community.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player, by downloading the mp3 or by subscribing to their feed.

In this latest post to his site Rob Allen talks some about application structure and the different kinds of objects he uses in his applications.

I currently use a very simple set of core objects within my model layer: entities, mappers and service objects. [...] I dislike the phrase "service object" as the word "service" means so many things to so many people. I haven't heard a better phrase yet that everyone understands though.

He defines each of the types of objects to help make the separation clearer. Here they are in brief:

• Entities are objects that represent something in my business logic.
• Mappers know how to save and load an entity from the data store.
• Service objects provide the API that the rest of the application uses.

Some of the comments on the post relate his choices to use in Zend Framework v2-based applications, noting that there are some base components you can extend to create these kinds of objects.

7PHP.com has posted a new article where they asked Lorna Mitchell for some of her advice for those wanting to take the Zend Certified Engineer exam, including what the test is like and how you can prepare effectively.

This is the 2nd set of Zend Certification Tips and Advice to help anyone taking either of the two Zend Exams powered by Zend Technologies: the Zend PHP Certification Exam and/or the Zend Framework Certification Exam. The aim being to help people who want to sit for those exams and inform them what it is all about & what to expect by hearing it from (pro) PHP Guys who have already been through it, that is => Hear It From Zend Certified Engineers!

They start with a little background on her and her experience with PHP and get quickly into the questions about the exam. Topics include things like:

• What the test is about and hopes to achieve
• Some things you can do to prepare
• A recommendation to make the most of your time exploring topics you might be weak in
• Whether or not the ZCE training classes help in the learning process

You can read the rest of the interview here.

In this recent post to his site Gonzalo Ayuso shows how to use the Symfony2 service container to interact directly with the Twitter API via an OAuth plugin.

If we are working within a Symfony2 application or a PHP application that uses the Symfony's Dependency injection container component you can easily integrate this simple script in the service container. I will show you the way that I use to do it.

His sample code uses the Guzzle HTTP library and some configuration options from a YAML file to create a new service hooked into the Twitter API with his credentials. He then imports it via his services configuration and shows an example of it in action - getting the latest contents of his timeline.

On 7PHP.com today there's a new interview posted, a different kind of one from their usual "community spotlight" series. In this new article they talk with Michelangelo van Dam about the Zend Certified Engineer test and any advice he can offer to those wanting to take it.

This is the 1st set of Zend Certification Tips and Advice to help anyone taking either of the two Zend Exams powered by Zend Technologies: the Zend PHP Certification Exam and/or the Zend Framework Certification Exam. The aim being to help people who want to sit for those exams and inform them what it is all about & what to expect by hearing it from (pro) PHP Guys who have already been through it, that is.

There's a long list of questions in the interview covering a wide range of things about the test everything from what its about out to some of Michelangelo's own opinions about the tests:

• Can you briefly give us an idea of what ZC is about, what it tries to achieve?
• Can you give us an idea of what need to be studied and what kind of stuffs we should expect..etc
• Parts of the modules that you think is more complex and one should pay special attention to?
• What TWO questions can you remember that you can share with us
• Do you recommend PHP guys to get certified?

Check out the answers to these and more questions in the full interview.