Matthew Setter has posted another new tutorial to his Master Zend Framework site today showing you how to access ServiceManager services in controller plugins. Controller plugins are a Zend Framework feature that allows certain events to trigger the plugin code during the lifetime of the controller.

I’ve seen some questions on Google+ and StackOverflow of late, regarding how to get access to the Zend Framework 2 database adapter, along with other ServiceManager-defined services, in a custom controller plugin. This type of setup can come in handy for a number of situations. You may want to access services such as caching, logging or databases and want to provide a simple interface for doing so. People seem really interested in how to do it, but how to get access to services from the ServiceManager doesn’t seem to be as clear as it could be. Gladly, there’s not much involved in actually doing it.

He shows you how to create a plugin for an existing module, creating the two needed classes and adding a new function to configure it. He starts with the plugin factory that can be used to generate an instance of the plugin. Next is the plugin class itself that extends the abstract plugin and controller plugin classes. The required database adapter is injected into it via a constructor injection. Finally, in the Module.php configuration, he creates a "getControllerPluginConfig" method that registers the new plugin and points to its class. A screencast is also provided showing the active development of the code.