php - Can I use zend translate, date and cache as standalone class in my project?

Question

I'm going to use Zend framework but just some tool of Zend like translate, date and cache. Can I use it as standalone class? My project has it own structure and I don't want use the whole Zend fw. If yes, which files should I include in my project? Is there a docs for using each Zend fw tool as standalone?

Answer 1

And remember, to use various Zend Framework components in another project, you just need to have the Zend library somewhere on your include_path. Copying the whole thing may seem overkill to use one component, but it's only disk space. Having those files there doesn't affect performance unless they are called upon. And this way, you don't have to sweat the dependencies, like Zend_Exception and its various component-specific subclasses.

So, for example, if you have a folder myapp/lib to contain your external libraries, you simply make sure that your include path contains that lib folder and copy the Zend folder into it as myapp/lib/Zend.

Then to use a component like Zend_Translate, all you have to do is something like the following:

require_once 'Zend/Translate.php';
$options = array(
    // your options here
);
$translate = new Zend_Translate($options);

With some kind of autloading mechanism in place, you can avoid even the require_once call. Setting up autoloading is as easy as putting the following in some kind of common/bootstrap file:

require_once 'Zend/Loader/Autoloader.php';
Zend_Loader_Autoloader::getInstance();

Then any classes that follow the PEAR 1-class-1-file naming convention can be loaded without explicitly adding any require/include statements.

If disk-space really is a concern and you really don't want the whole Zend library, then you could investigate a packageizer, like Jani Hartikainen's Packageizer.