The Zend DEveloper Zone has posted another Ajax-related tutorial, this time talking about the creation of an Ajax-based chat application for your website using the Zend Framework.

This tutorial is a step by step introduction to creating a lightweight chat application using XML as a storage medium. [...] Even with the advent of irc and instant messengers, users continue see an alternative web based solution as attractive for a number of reasons whether its limited access to instant messengers through a corporate proxy or simply for convenience sake.

He starts off by laying the groundwork for the app, setting up the directory structure in Framework fashion. There's a brief look at making sure your .htaccess file is correct for the application (allowing public and javascript through) before getting to the actual code. There's a good bit of code there and some of it is explained, but if you're not familiar with the framework, you might be a little lost. Finally, he includes the main interface - the IndexController - that handles all of the requests/responses to and from the user.

You can download the sample application here [tar.gz] or here [zip].