[Update Feb. 1, 2011]

A much easier way to install PECL packages:

CFLAGS="-arch i386" ./pecl install

To get pecl working properly, make sure you have Xcode installed on you machine. Next, you will need to get a copy of MAMP’s source and prepare it using 32-bit compile flags. You can download the MAMP source from the MAMP download page. Running the .dmg should extract the source. After extracting the source run the following:


mkdir /Applications/MAMP/Library/Include/
mv /path/to/extracted/mamp/source/ /Applications/MAMP/Library/Include/


Next you will want to extract the PHP package and do the following to prepare the package:


mv /Applications/MAMP/Library/Include/extracted_php_source/ /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/include/php/
cd /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/include/php/
MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6 CFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386 -arch x86_64' LDFLAGS='-O3 -arch i386 -arch x86_64' CXXFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386 -arch x86_64' ./configure --with-php-config=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/bin/php-config


Finally, you now can install pecl extensions with the following command:

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6 CFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386 -arch x86_64' LDFLAGS='-O3 -arch i386 -arch x86_64' CXXFLAGS='-O3 -fno-common -arch i386 -arch x86_64' /Applications/MAMP/bin/php5/bin/pecl install


And that’s it! Enjoy!

$loginForm = new Zend_Form(new Zend_Config_Ini('/path/to/form/config', 'login'));

This will create a Zend_Form object by passing it a Zend_Config_Ini object.

Unfortunately, when you decide to build a custom form using Zend_Config, the documentation on how this actually works, is extremely sparse. There are three examples of using the Zend_Config, however, they are not commented and there is no explanation as to how it works, there is only a weak reference to PHP object oriented code from which to draw conclusions from. Maybe, I am too used to the Java API documentation.

Anyways, after a few days with ZF, it has become apparent to me, that ZF is a very well written, powerful, extensible, and versatile PHP framework. However, due to its incomplete documentation, I would argue that its’ learning curve is fairly high, much higher than Code Igniter’s. In time though, I am sure the ZF developers will realize this, and make the effort to provide better documentation. In the meantime though, I am going to continue to use ZF and hopefully, take it upon myself to provide some insight; a Zend_Form tutorial using Zend_Config is already in the works.

The following is a code snippet from the HTTP and HTTPS documentation that shows how to easily send data using HTTP POST:

$postdata = http_build_query(
    array(
        'var1' => 'some content',
        'var2' => 'doh'
    )
);
 
$opts = array('http' =>
    array(
        'method'  => 'POST',
        'header'  => 'Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded',
        'content' => $postdata
    )
);
 
$context  = stream_context_create($opts);
 
$result = file_get_contents('http://example.com/submit.php', false, $context);

Quick Explanation

1. http_build_query: Generates an URL-encoded string from an associative array. Example: array(‘key1′ => ‘value1′, ‘key2′ => ‘value2′) becomes “key1=value1&key2=value2″

   This properly encodes the data for the post transaction.

2. stream_context_create: Creates and returns a resource to a stream context from an associative array of arrays in the format $arr['wrapper']['option'] = $value

   This creates a linear output stream to be sent during the request transmission.

3. file_get_contents: Acts exactly like file(); except that it reads an entire file into a string.

   This requests a file resource and puts the result into a string.