In their continuing series on the Zend Framework, the IBM developerWorks site has posted part three today, a closer look at working with feeds in the framework.

This "Understanding the Zend Framework" series chronicles the building of an online feed reader, Chomp, while explaining the major aspects of using the recently introduced open source PHP Zend Framework.

In parts 1 and 2, we discuss the goals behind the Zend Framework and show you how to use it to create the beginnings of our online feed reader, creating a form and adding information to a database while getting to know the MVC pattern. In this tutorial, you will see how to use the Zend Framework to implement the online feed reader portion of the application.

Obviously, you'll need to have kept up with the previous articles in the series (one, two) to get a grasp on this one, but those are quick reads so you can get caught up quickly. They first build up a new schema with tables for the RSS data being pulled in, then start creating the view and controller to get the ball rolling. They also introduce the Zend_InputFilter class for testing and removing unwanted content. The code in the controller allows the creation of new feeds, the subscribe to a feed, update a users information, and authenticate the user.

The FeedController does the work of grabbing the contents of the remote feeds and parsing them down to be used locally. They also include functionality to "bookmark" entries and save them for later.