On the Master Zend Framework site today Matthew Setter has a new post covering the configuring of the service manager using abstract factories.

One of the best features about Zend Framework 2 is undoubtedly the ServiceManager; because it makes it almost painless to configure and retrieve services in a consistent and predictable manner, anywhere in your application, at any time. [...] But the catch is, there’s quite a bit to learn if you want to use it properly. As well as that, there’s quite a number of ways to use it.

He walks you through some of the pros and cons of the various ways to work with the ServiceManager and where the factories fit in. He takes a bit of time to introduce the concepts behind abstract factories and how to define them in a Zend Framework v2 application. He finishes out the post with a more practical, working example using the interfaces provided to get a "MyUserTable" service.