Pro PHP- Patterns, Frameworks, Testing and More

CHAPTER 17 ■ THE ZEND FRAMEWORK APPLIED^263

Listing 17-4. A Stats Logging Plug-in (YourPrefix_Controller_Plugin_Statistics)

class YourPrefix_Controller_Plugin_Statistics extends

Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract {

public function routeStartup($request) {

$uri = $request->getRequestUri();

$dbconfig = array(

'host' => 'localhost',

'username' => 'user',

'password' => 'password',

'dbname' => 'demo'

);

$db = Zend_Db::factory('PDO_PGSQL', $dbconfig);

$data = array(

'uri' => $uri

);

$db->insert('stats', $data);

}

}

To register the plug-in, you need to call registerPlugin() on the front controller:

$front->registerPlugin(new YourPrefix_Controller_Plugin_Statistics());

By using plug-ins, you can collect all sorts of information about your applications in a site-

wide manner.

Creating Helpers

Helpers are classes that are designed to augment and integrate functionality for MVC compo-

nents. The two main types of helpers are action helpers and view helpers.

Writing Action Helpers

Referring back to Figure 17-1, you will notice two more events that are called on the action

HelperBroker: notifyPreDispatch() and notifyPostDispatch(). These two methods are trans-

lated to simply preDispatch() and postDispatch() for your action helpers and can give you the

ability to work with action controller-specific events without registering a site-wide plug-in.

This can enable load-on-use scenarios, which will be much more efficient if you have a large

number of helpers.

The view renderer is a good example of built-in functionality that is deployed as an action

helper. It uses the Zend_Request::getActionName() method as well as the postDispatch() event

to determine and render a template specifically designed for an action.

McArthur_819-9.book Page 263 Friday, February 29, 2008 8:03 AM