We have multiple sites and quite a bit of code, so likely to stick with ZF1 due to ongoing work an inertia but I’m not sure we will ever go to ZF2 (i.e. probably something else all together at some point).

ZF1 was good enough that it made the boilerplate worth it – it was minimal and kept large projects on track. ZF2′s added complexity for no apparent value (And screwing up the configuration system – .php files for configuration? That will end well…) has turned it into something I don’t want to use.

I don’t want to make lame jokes at the expense of Java (specifically the “Enterprise” flavour of Java), but it really rings true. It’s much more complicated and much less sophisticated.

I can totally understand where you are coming from in terms of complexity….

However, after 3 months of using ZF2 in a new project (having used ZF1 before), I have to say that I am totally in love with it. Sure, there was a lot of head scratching and frustration involved (the documentation was basic and getting good background articles was difficult), but after the initial pain I can now see several goodies:

First of all, it seems that the old DI container is still there but is replaced with a simpler IOD mechanism, the ServiceLocator. Having this means we can now delegate the responsibility of creating complex class structures to one place only. Made unit testing sooo much nicer as now classes do not have to know how they have the dependencies injected.
Also, there is not a singleton in site, having the service locator means we truly have not got any global data in place any more: When I tried using my own Controller test cases in ZF1 using a web-based test runner using, well, ZF1, the global data and singletons meant that it was virtually impossible to separate the parts of MVC under test and the ones running the test. This is not the case any more in ZF2.

Our new application is as far as I can tell so far, and subjectively speaking, the most beautiful code that I have been involved with. ZF2 has enabled us to add functionality truly horizontally using the new Event-driven way without modifying existing classes…

Time will tell, but so far, so good, after initially more coding up-front it seems that now a lot more can be achieved in a lot less code……

It is also possible to upload the entire Project Gutenberg library onto it so it becomes an ebook reader of sorts. I also believe that down the line, it will become possible to upload your own ebooks to it through someones hard work and hacking skill. Wait and see. For under £20 it is super cheap and could become the cheapest ebook reader available.

In response to a few points you made though:

I live in zone 2, London and use this on my daily commutes to and from work.

The only products released that aren’t designed are the ones you flush. Whether they’re designed well or not.

I’m not sure where you heard that the Wikireader was attempting to address the “IT needs of the developing world” as it would be ridiculous and oxymoronic to make this claim with an offline device. If the makers did make this statement I’d feel quite sick about buying it. Hopefully they didn’t?

This is a total nightmare and I am very happy not to be the only one finding it a total crappy mess.

What a dissapointment !

This article was written when ZF2 was in beta stage.

Have you tried the stable ZF2 release? And, have you changed your opinion?

Yeah, the deep structures and explicit naming is annoying, but I think I won’t care in time. What is annoying me most is the module.config.php. Its not as bad as I first thought, but you do still need to set your “invokables” for each view Controller. Not a big deal, but not what I am used to.

I spent a little time reading docs on Symfony, CakePHP, and CodeIgniter. The of the three, Symfony looks most appealing, and in some ways it’s like ZF2 with the new namespaces. I don’t like idea of templating engine, and rather just use layouts the way ZF does. Symfony has some nice helpers and easy ACL setup according to docs. But now, since I have a simple MVC module running in ZF2, I think I’ll stick with it. I am most used to the ZF-way, and even though ZF2 is a quite different from ZF1, its still ZF and I like the open flexibility of it.

Now… on to makeing ACL’s and DB adapters work the ZF2 way!
Good luck!