Chapter 3 is basically setting up the user tables in the database and the functionality for loading, inserting and deleting the records. There are two custom built classes that the author developed that will need to be downloaded from the source code – DatabaseObject.php and Profile.php. I’m wondering if these are watered down versions of the classes the author actually uses because there are limited comments in the code and he stresses in the beginning of the book the importance of commenting.
While going through this chapter I had started reading Chapter 4 to get a better idea of how the Chapter 3 code worked. I plan on making a couple of modifications with how things work in Chapter 4. For one thing – the system is set up where it sets the user password and then they must go in and change it. I prefer to give the user the ability to create their own password at the time of registration. The second thing is that the application uses the PEAR CAPTCHA – I find these graphic CAPTCHA very hard to read many times and very frustrating. Anyway – I will attempt to replace the authors version with reCAPTCHA which helps to digitize books.
I will submit the changes I make to the author’s code in the next blog post so if anyone who wishes to utilize this can see how I did it. I can’t see it being very hard – but considering this is my first time using Zend Framework or even reCAPTCHA – who knows.