In working with the Zend Framework, Richard Lord has come across something a little strange - how Zend_View helpers work if you try to put them outside of the Framework's own helpers folder and try to use them.

All is fine if you place your helpers either within the zend framework's own helpers folder (not a good idea) or within a directory in your site structure. The problem arises if you place the helpers in a folder in the PHP include path and don't know the full path to the folder.

He investigates why this might happen, tracking it down to some include issues despite mimicking the structure the Zend Framework itself recommends. Unfortunately, this still requires knowing the full path to the helper, not the relative. Unfortunately, that's just not what he needs.

So, he set out to find a solution and ended up with two - one that makes a modification to the Zend_View_Abstract class and the other is to extend the Zend_View class with his own custom class handling the pathing to pull the helper in correctly.