First, I should point out that the title of this post is a bit of an intentional misnomer. There’s really no such thing as “module-specific” anything in ZF2, so what we’re really talking about is the topmost namespace of the controller being dispatched. So in the case of MyModule\Controller\SomeController, the topmost namespace would be MyModule. In most cases, this will be the name of a given module.

Here’s how you can easily switch the layout (or perform any other arbitrary logic) for a specific module in Zend Framework 2.0 (as of d0b1dbc92):

<?php
namespace MyModule;
 
class Module
{
    public function init(Manager $moduleManager)
    {
        $sharedEvents = $moduleManager->events()->getSharedManager();
        $sharedEvents->attach(__NAMESPACE__, 'dispatch', function($e) {
            // This event will only be fired when an ActionController under the MyModule namespace is dispatched.
            $controller = $e->getTarget();
            $controller->layout('layout/alternativelayout');
        }, 100);
    }
}

This event listener will only be triggered if an ActionController under the MyModule namespace is dispatched, so you do not need to perform any additional logic to check which “module” or namespace the controller being dispatched is under.

Keep in mind, as of writing this, ZF2 is still in beta. There are plans to add a convenience layer to the framework before the GA release which will likely make common tasks like this much simpler.

See also: Rob Allen’s post on module specific bootstrapping in ZF2

With the new modular infrastructure in Zend Framework 2, one of the most common questions will indoubitably be how to share a database connection across modules. Here’s a quick explanation of how to share your database connection across multiple modules in a way that can even allow you to use a single connection between Zend\Db, Doctrine2, and possibly even other database libraries / ORMs.

Continue reading »

In response to some concerns voiced on the zf-contributors mailing list, I went ahead and built a tool to aid developers in following the progress of Zend Framework 2 across the various developer forks and branches:

You can try the tool out at http://zf2.evan.pro/ or subscribe to the RSS feed at http://zf2.evan.pro/feed. I also hooked it up to a Twitter account that you can follow @zf2dev.

You can follow the progress and fork the tool on GitHub and on the ZF-Contributor mailing list. This is of course, open source; released under the New BSD license.