model

Zend_Acl is a very powerful tool to help manage access control logic, but it can be a bit difficult to determine exactly where and how to use it.

In previous Zend Framework apps I've written, I often handled access control at the level of the controller action. Each action was represented in the ACL as a resource, and the ACL logic was applied by a custom plugin just prior to any action dispatch.

As a sort of proof of concept for the ideas I discussed in my previous post, I've put together the first draft of what could become a very helpful reusable module. With this post, I'd like to introduce my new Zend Framework "content" module, which provides several abstract components for a reusable model layer, along with a concrete framework for building a variety of content types sharing a common database-based persistence layer.

A few weeks back, Matthew Weier-O'Phinney wrote a very helpful discussion of model layer infrastructure using various components of the Zend Framework. I especially appreciated his advice on using Zend_Form as an input filter inside the model class itself; it provides a very clean way to keep validation and filtering logic properly encapsulated.