Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP

this print for content only—size & color not accurate spine = 1.1163" 592 page count Books for professionals By professionals® Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP Dear Reader, Many programming books on the market today focus specifically on a particu- lar methodology or software package, and although you will gain a solid under- standing of the subject matter from these books, you won’t always know how to apply what you’ve learned in a real-world situation. This book is designed to show you how to bring together many different ideas and features by start- ing with a clean slate and gradually building the code base so it evolves into a complete web application. The premise of the application we build in this book is that it is a “Web 2.0” application. What this means is that (among other things) our application gen- erates accessible and standards-compliant code while making heavy of use of Ajax. We achieve this by using the Smarty™ Template Engine and Cascading Style Sheets, as well as the Prototype JavaScript library. Additionally, we create a fun and intuitive interface by applying simple visual effects on various pages using the Script.aculo.us JavaScript library. To help with the development of the extensive PHP code in this book, we use the Zend Framework. This is an open source PHP 5 library that contains many different components that you can easily use in any of your day-to-day development. We use many of the Zend Framework components in this book, such as database abstraction (with a focus on MySQL® and PostgreSQL), logging, authentication, and search. The “Web 2.0” application that we build in this book is a collaborative blogging tool. It will allow users to register and create a personal blog. When creating blog posts, users will be able upload images, apply tags, and assign locations (using Google Maps). We will also look at how to use microformats when displaying user blog posts. Quentin Zervaas US $44.99 Shelve in PHP User level: Intermediate–Advanced Zervaas W eb 2.0 Applications w ith PHP The eXperT’s Voice® in WeB DeVelopmenT Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP cyan maGenTa yelloW Black panTone 123 c Quentin Zervaas Companion eBook Available www.apress.com SOURCE CODE ONLINE Companion eBook See last page for details on $10 eBook version ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-906-8 ISBN-10: 1-59059-906-3 9 781590 599068 54499 Develop a complete PHP web application from start to finish RelAted titleS Practical Quentin Zervaas Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page i Practical Web 2.0 Applications with PHP Copyright © 2008 by Quentin Zervaas All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher. ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-59059-906-8 ISBN-10 (pbk): 1-59059-906-3 ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4302-0474-9 ISBN-10 (electronic): 1-4302-0474-5 Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Lead Editor: Ben Renow-Clarke Technical Reviewer: Jeff Sambells Editorial Board: Steve Anglin, Ewan Buckingham, Tony Campbell, Gary Cornell, Jonathan Gennick, Jason Gilmore, Kevin Goff, Jonathan Hassell, Matthew Moodie, Joseph Ottinger, Jeffrey Pepper, Ben Renow-Clarke, Dominic Shakeshaft, Matt Wade, Tom Welsh Project Manager: Richard Dal Porto Copy Editors: Andy Carroll, Kim Wimpsett Assistant Production Director: Kari Brooks-Copony Production Editor: Liz Berry Compositor: Diana Van Winkle Proofreader: Lisa Hamilton Indexer: Broccoli Information Management Artist: Diana Van Winkle Cover Designer: Kurt Krames Manufacturing Director: Tom Debolski Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springer-sbm.com, or visit For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2855 Telegraph Avenue, Suite 600, Berkeley, CA 94705. Phone 510-549-5930, fax 510-549-5939, e-mail info@apress.com, or visit The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author(s) nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this work. The source code for this book is available to readers at 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page ii Contents at a Glance About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv About the Technical Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii ■CHAPTER 1 Application Planning and Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ■CHAPTER 2 Setting Up the Application Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 ■CHAPTER 3 User Authentication, Authorization, and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 ■CHAPTER 4 User Registration, Login, and Logout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 ■CHAPTER 5 Introduction to Prototype and Scriptaculous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 ■CHAPTER 6 Styling the Web Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 ■CHAPTER 7 Building the Blogging System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 ■CHAPTER 8 Extending the Blog Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 ■CHAPTER 9 Personalized User Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 ■CHAPTER 10 Implementing Web 2.0 Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 ■CHAPTER 11 A Dynamic Image Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 ■CHAPTER 12 Implementing Site Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 ■CHAPTER 13 Integrating Google Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 ■CHAPTER 14 Deployment and Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 ■INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547 iii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page iii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page iv Contents About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv About the Technical Reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii ■CHAPTER 1 Application Planning and Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 What Is Web 2.0? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Database Connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Web Site Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Web Site Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Main Home Page and User Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 User Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Account Login and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 User Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Web Site Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Application Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Other Aspects of Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Search-Engine Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 PHPDoc-Style Commenting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Security . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Application Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Maintainability and Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Version Control and Unit Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 ■CHAPTER 2 Setting Up the Application Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Web Server Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Operating System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Installing the Apache HTTP Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Installing MySQL 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Installing PHP 5.2.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 v 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page v ■CONTENTSvi Application Filesystem Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Web Root Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Data Storage Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 PHP Classes Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Templates Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Full Directory Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Installing the Zend Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Configuring the Web Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Creating a Virtual Host in Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Creating a Virtual Host in Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Restarting Your Web Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Setting Up the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Using the Model-View-Controller Pattern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Separating Application Logic from Presentation Logic . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Directing All Requests to index.php . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Introduction to the Zend_Controller Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 How Requests Work with Zend_Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Creating the IndexController . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Defining Application Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Connecting to the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Testing the Database Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 The Smarty Template Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Why Not Use a Different Template Engine? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Downloading and Installing Smarty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Automatic View Rendering with Zend_Controller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Integrating Smarty with the Web Site Controllers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Adding Logging Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Writing to the Log File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 ■CHAPTER 3 User Authentication, Authorization, and Management . . . . . . 45 Creating the User Database Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Timestamps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 User Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Introduction to Zend_Auth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Instantiating Zend_Auth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Authenticating with Zend_Auth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Introduction to Zend_Acl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 A Zend_Acl Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page vi Combining Zend_Auth, Zend_Acl, and Zend_Controller_Front . . . . . . . . 57 Managing User Records with DatabaseObject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 The DatabaseObject_User Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Using DatabaseObject_User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Managing User Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Using Profile_User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Integrating Profile_User with DatabaseObject_User . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 ■CHAPTER 4 User Registration, Login, and Logout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Adding User Registration to the Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Creating the Form Processor for User Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Displaying the Registration Form and Processing Registrations . . . 81 Adding CAPTCHA to the User Registration Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 Adding E-mail Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Implementing Account Login and Logout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Creating the Login Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Adding the Account Controller Login Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Logging Successful and Failed Login Attempts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Logging Users Out of Their Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Dealing with Forgotten Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Resetting a User’s Password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Functions for Resetting Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Implementing Account Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Creating the Account Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Updating the Web Site Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 Allowing Users to Update Their Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 ■CHAPTER 5 Introduction to Prototype and Scriptaculous . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Downloading and Installing Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Prototype Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Selecting Objects in the Document Object Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 The $() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 The getElementsByClassName() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 The $$() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 The getElementsBySelector() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Prototype’s Hash Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 ■CONTENTS vii vii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page vii Other Element Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Showing and Hiding Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Retrieving Dimensions of Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Managing Classes of Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Manipulating Strings with Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Ajax Operations in Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Ajax Request Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Ajax Callback Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 An Ajax.Request Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Event Handling in Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Observing an Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Finding Out Which Element an Event Occurred On . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Canceling an Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Creating JavaScript Classes in Prototype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Creating a Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Binding Function Calls to Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 From Prototype to Scriptaculous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Prebuilt Controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Drag and Drop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Visual Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 DOM Element Builder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 JavaScript Unit Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Downloading and Installing Scriptaculous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Combining Prototype, Scriptaculous, Ajax, and PHP in a Useful Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Creating the Main HTML Page: index.php . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Styling the Application: styles.css . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Creating and Populating the Database: schema.sql . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Managing the List Items on the Server Side: items.php . . . . . . . . 159 Processing Ajax Requests on the Server Side: processor.php . . . 161 Creating the Client-Side Application Logic: scripts.js . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 ■CHAPTER 6 Styling the Web Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Adding Page Titles and Breadcrumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 The Breadcrumbs Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 Generating URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Setting the Title and Trail for Each Controller Action . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Creating a Smarty Plug-In to Output Breadcrumbs . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Displaying the Page Title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 ■CONTENTSviii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page viii 809b8b6f91d5ff50033254241f3132ed Integrating the Design into the Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Creating the Static HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 Moving the HTML Markup into Smarty Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 Constructing the CSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Specifying Media Types and Loading the CSS File . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Creating the Application CSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Creating a Print-Only Style Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198 The Full Application Style Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 Styling the Application Web Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204 Loading Prototype and Scriptaculous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Implementing Client-Side Form Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 Adding JSON Support to CustomControllerAction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Modifying the Form Processor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Modifying the Registration Controller Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210 Creating the JavaScript Form Validator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 Loading the UserRegistrationForm Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 ■CHAPTER 7 Building the Blogging System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Creating the Database Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 Setting Up DatabaseObject and Profile Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Creating the DatabaseObject_BlogPost Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Creating the Profile_BlogPost Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Creating a Controller for Managing Blog Posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Extending the Application Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 The BlogmanagerController Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Linking to Blog Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226 Creating and Editing Blog Posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 Creating the Blog Post Submission Form Template . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 Instantiating FormProcessor_BlogPost in editAction() . . . . . . . . . . 231 Implementing the FormProcessor_BlogPost Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Generating a Permanent Link to a Blog Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Filtering Submitted HTML . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Creating a New Blog Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 Previewing Blog Posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 Creating the Preview Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Implementing the Preview Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Requesting Confirmation for User Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 ■CONTENTS ix 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page ix Updating the Status of a Blog Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Completing setstatusAction() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254 Notifying the User . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 ■CHAPTER 8 Extending the Blog Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Listing Blog Posts on the Blog Manager Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265 Fetching Blog Posts from the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 Assigning Recent Posts and the Monthly Summary to the Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274 Displaying Recent Posts in the Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276 Displaying the Monthly Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Ajaxing the Blog Monthly Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Creating the Ajax Request Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284 The BlogMonthlySummary JavaScript Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Installing the BlogMonthlySummary Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Notifying the User About the Content Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287 Integrating a WYSIWYG Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Downloading and Installing FCKeditor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292 Configuring FCKeditor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Loading FCKeditor in the Blog Editing Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296 ■CHAPTER 9 Personalized User Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Controlling User Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Presenting Customizable Settings to Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298 Processing Changes to User Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299 Creating Default User Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 The UserController Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302 Routing Requests to UserController . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303 Handling Requests to UserController . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Displaying the User’s Blog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Displaying the Blog Index Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313 Displaying Individual Blog Posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318 Generating Blog Archive Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322 Displaying the Monthly Archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324 Populating the Application Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Loading Recent Public Posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326 Implementing the Application Home Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333 ■CONTENTSx 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page x ■CHAPTER 10 Implementing Web 2.0 Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 Implementing Tagging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336 Managing Blog Post Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340 Displaying a User’s Tags on Their Blog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344 Displaying a Tag Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347 Displaying Tags on Each Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Web Feeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351 Data Formats for Web Feeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 Creating an Atom Feed with Zend_Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 Adding the Feed to UserController . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353 Linking to Your Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Other Feed Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357 Microformats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 An Example of Using Microformats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358 Why Use Microformats? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360 Microformatting Your Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362 Allowing Users to Create a Public Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Allowing Users to Create a Public Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363 Displaying a User’s Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369 ■CHAPTER 11 A Dynamic Image Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371 Storing Uploaded Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372 Creating the Database Table for Image Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 Controlling Uploaded Images with DatabaseObject . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 Uploading Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374 Setting the Form Encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Adding the Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Specifying the File Input Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Setting the Maximum File Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378 Handling Uploaded Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Sending Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 Resizing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Creating Thumbnails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Linking the Thumbnailer to the Image Action Handler . . . . . . . . . . 395 ■CONTENTS xi 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xi Managing Blog Post Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 Automatically Loading Blog Post Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399 Displaying Images on the Post Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401 Deleting Blog Post Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Using Scriptaculous and Ajax to Delete Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 Deleting Images when Posts Are Deleted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 Reordering Blog Post Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412 Displaying Images on User Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 Extending the GetPosts() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417 Displaying Thumbnail Images on Blog Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418 Displaying Images on the Blog Details Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 420 Displaying Larger Images with Lightbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 ■CHAPTER 12 Implementing Site Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 Introduction to Zend_Search_Lucene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427 Comparison to MySQL Full-Text Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428 Zend_Search_Lucene Field Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429 Field Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 Indexing Application Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430 Indexing Multiple Types of Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 Creating a New Zend_Search_Lucene_Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 Retrieving the Index Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 Building the Entire Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434 Indexing and Unindexing a Single Blog Post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 435 Triggering Search Index Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 Creating the Search Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 Adding the Search Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 442 Handling Search Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443 Querying the Search Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444 Displaying Search Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 448 Types of Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451 Adding Autocompletion to the Search Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 Providing Search Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452 Creating an Action Handler to Return Search Results . . . . . . . . . . 453 Retrieving Search Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454 Loading the SearchSuggestor Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 Displaying Search Suggestions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457 Adding Mouse Navigation to Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460 Adding Keyboard Navigation to Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467 ■CONTENTSxii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xii ■CHAPTER 13 Integrating Google Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 Google Maps Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 Geocoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 Displaying Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470 Controlling Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 Planning Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 Limitations of Google Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 Browser Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 Documentation and Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 Creating a Google Maps API Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474 Adding Location Storage Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 Creating the Database Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475 Creating the DatabaseObject_BlogPostLocation Class . . . . . . . . . 475 Modifying Blog Posts to Load Locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 Creating Our First Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478 Creating a New Blog Manager Controller Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479 Displaying Your First Google Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481 Managing Locations on the Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 Handling Location Management Ajax Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 Creating the Address Lookup Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 492 Extending the BlogLocationManager JavaScript Class . . . . . . . . . 493 Using BlogLocationManager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508 Displaying the Map on Users’ Public Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 Outputting Locations Using the Geo Microformat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509 Creating the BlogLocations Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511 Updating the Blog Post Display Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516 ■CHAPTER 14 Deployment and Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 Application Logging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 E-mailing Critical Errors to an Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519 Using Application Logs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 Site Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524 Objectives of Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 Handling Predispatch Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526 Application Runtime Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531 Web Site Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 Administrator Section Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535 Implementing Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536 ■CONTENTS xiii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xiii Application Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 Different Configurations for Different Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538 Deploying Application Files with Rsync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542 Backup and Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 Exporting a Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543 Importing a Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545 ■INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xiv About the Author ■QUENTIN ZERVAAS is a web developer based in Adelaide, South Australia, where he has been self-employed since 2003. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Adelaide in 2001, Quentin worked for several web development firms before branching out on his own, developing a wide range of custom web applications for customers all around the world. Quentin has recently started a new company called Recite Media ( com.au) with two partners. Recite Media develops web applications primarily for other devel- opment or design companies to resell. Its flagship product, Recite CMS, is being used by some of Australia’s largest companies. Quentin also runs and writes for his PHP development resource site, PhpRiot (www.phpriot.com), which provides a number of useful articles on a wide variety of PHP-related topics. After completing his role as the technical reviewer for Beginning Ajax with PHP: From Novice to Professional (Apress, 2006), he decided to undertake writing this book. xv 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xv About the Technical Reviewer ■JEFFREY SAMBELLS is a graphic designer and self-taught web application developer best known for his unique ability to merge the visual world of graphics with the mental realm of code. After obtaining his bachelor’s of technology degree in graphic communications manage- ment with a minor in multimedia, Jeffrey originally enjoyed the paper-and-ink printing industry, but he soon realized the world of pixels and code was where his ideas would prosper. Jeffrey has previously published articles related to print design and has contributed to award-winning graphical and Internet software designs. His latest book, AdvancED DOM Scripting: Dynamic Web Design Techniques (friends of ED, 2007), was an instant success. In late 2005, Jeffrey also became a PHP 4 Zend Certified Engineer; he updated the certification to PHP 5 in September 2006 to become one of the first PHP 5 Zend Certified Engineers. Jeffrey also maintains a blog at where he discusses his thoughts about everything from web development to photography. He currently lives and plays in Ontario, Canada, with his wife, Stephanie; his daughter, Addison; and their little dog, Milo. xvi 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xvi Introduction Many of today’s web development books and articles cover single aspects of the development life cycle, delving only into specific features rather than looking at the whole picture. In this book, we will develop a complete web application. Although we will be using various third-party libraries and tools to aid in development, we will be developing the application from start to finish. The focus of this book is on Web 2.0, a catchphrase that has been in use for a few years now and is typically used to refer to web sites or web applications that have particular charac- teristics. Some of these characteristics include the following: • Correctly using HTML/XHTML, CSS, and other standards • Using Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to provide a responsive application without requiring a full refresh of pages • Allowing syndication of web site content using RSS • Adding wikis, blogs, or tags Although not everybody is an advocate of the “Web 2.0” phrase, the term does signify forward progress in web development. And although not everybody has the need to provide a wiki or a blog on their web site, the other characteristics listed (such as correct standards usage) provide a good basis for a web site and should be used by all developers, regardless of how they want their web site or application categorized. I wrote this book because I want to share with other users how I build web sites. Having been a web developer for ten years now (full-time for the past seven), I have a solid under- standing of a wide range of web-related topics and have much to offer newer developers or developers looking to expand their own knowledge. Who This Book Is For This book has been written primarily for intermediate to expert PHP programmers. Although programmers of all levels will benefit from this book, we do jump in to the deep end very quickly, so some prior knowledge of PHP is assumed. Having said that, if you’re relatively new to PHP, you will definitely benefit from this book because it will formalize some of the techniques you have already learned and will show you some different ways of approaching various problems. In this book, I have made the assumption that you are familiar with HTML and CSS, although since most of the code developed in this book is PHP and JavaScript, an advanced knowledge of HTML and CSS is not critical. All JavaScript code is explained thoroughly, which, in combination with the Prototype JavaScript library we will be using, makes the listings rela- tively straightforward. xvii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xvii How This Book Is Structured We will start the book by determining which features to implement in our web application and then implement each one as we progress through the book. Each chapter will add a new set of features to the application, until reaching the final chapter where we look at strategies for deploying the application. The specific type of application we develop in this book (a multiuser blogging system) is not particularly important; rather, it is used simply as a tool to show you the process of devel- oping a web application. Each chapter is specifically designed to demonstrate particular aspects of development that may arise regardless of the type of application: • Chapter 1, Application Planning and Design. We begin the book by looking at what defines Web 2.0, as well as looking briefly at the features that will be implemented in the application. Additionally, this chapter covers various aspects of the web develop- ment life cycle that should be considered when planning and implementing web applications. • Chapter 2, Setting Up the Application Framework. In this chapter, we begin to imple- ment the web application. This process begins by correctly setting up the environment (that is, installing the correct web server software) and then by creating the initial file structure of the site. In addition to connecting to the database with PHP, we will handle user requests with the Zend Framework and manage HTML code using the Smarty Template Engine. • Chapter 3, User Authentication, Authorization, and Management. This chapter gives the first look at using a database. We look at how to easily manage database data when we implement the user system. Additionally, we look at how a role-based permissions system works and then implement it into the application. • Chapter 4, User Registration, Login, and Logout. Continuing from Chapter 3, this chapter shows how to implement a user registration system. Since this is the first time the book deals with user-submitted data, this chapter looks at how to correctly deal with such data when we create the registration and login forms. • Chapter 5, Introduction to Prototype and Scriptaculous. Since we make heavy use of JavaScript and Ajax in later chapters, we move away from the main application in this chapter while we explore two of the most useful JavaScript libraries available. Prototype helps programmers develop easily maintainable cross-platform JavaScript code, while Scriptaculous simplifies the process of adding appealing visual effects to web pages. • Chapter 6, Styling the Web Application. In this chapter, we step back slightly from the web application in that we focus more on the user experience rather than on the main application features. We first look at implementing various navigational items (which also gives us a first taste of developing custom Smarty plug-ins), and we then complete the chapter by implementing a simple and clean web design into the application. ■INTRODUCTIONxviii 9063CH00CMP3 11/19/07 8:39 PM Page xviii • Chapter 7, Building the Blogging System. This chapter moves on to beginning the implementation of the blogging system. In this chapter, we give users the ability to add, edit, and delete their blog posts. One of the key concepts covered is how to correctly allow user-submitted HTML while keeping the site safe and secure for visitors. • Chapter 8, Extending the Blog Manager. This chapter largely builds on what was implemented in Chapter 7. A comprehensive Ajax example is included in this chapter that we will use to help users manage their blogs. We also integrate an open source What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor into a blog post creation form. • Chapter 9, Personalized User Areas. At this point in the book, users can create a new account as well as manage their very own blogs. In this chapter, we make their blogs public in the application. We give each user a public home page within our application web site in which all of their blog posts are shown. This chapter shows how to imple- ment more advanced URL schemes, as well as shows you how to enable users to customize their own experience by managing their own profiles and settings. • C