On the Symfony-framework.com website, there's a look at what's new in the latest Symfony build, version 1.1, as presented by Fabien Potencier at this year's International PHP Conference 2007.

In this article, I will briefly explain all the significant changes of Symfony 1.1 so that you will have fewer doubts deciding between: rewrite part of your old code, simply update your application or use the new Symfony 1.1 only in new developments.

There's three things he mentions - the new task framework to help organize code development, the reorganization of the event dispatcher and its dependencies, and the new Form, Widget and Validator framework.

In his latest blog entry on the ThinkingPHP Blog, Felix Geisendörfer continues on with the series started here and shows that there's more to learn from the CakePHP source code.

In the previous post I was showing how to use the Dispatcher::dispatch() function. Now what's more interesting, is what it actually does and in what order.

He lists out the order of the process the Dispatcher follows:

• Build the $params array
• Find the base url
• Load/Include the requested Controller
• Possible Plugin Logic
• Executing the Admin Route
• Render a possible missingController error
• Action exists? Action private?
• Set Controller variables
• Load Components & Models
• Render possible missingAction/privateActione errors
• Invoke the controller

It seems like a long way to go to just get the request to the right Controller, but it all happens in the blink of an eye when the page request is made.

If you've enjoyed the look at the Dispatcher, let Felix know - especially if you'd like to see other parts covered.

As pointed out by Cal Evans on the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new look at Observers and Dispatchers over on Peter Goodman's blog.

Maybe you've used a framework that uses Observers and Dispatchers, or you've heard of them but don't know how they work. Well, I'm going to explain them and tell you why they're so useful.

He starts with a table defining the parts of this dynamic duo before jumping into the code examples and explainations. His first example is just a basic use of the pattern, while the second involves using a MySQL table for the notification events.

In his latest blog post today, Felix Geisendörfer shares his "ultimate bootstrap technique" for CakePHP without having to render a page.

Ok, I shouldn't use such a buzz-headline, but I was very happy today, when I discovered a new way to bootsrap CakePHP wihout having to render a page. This is especially useful when you try to embed CakePHP in existing php apps (drupal, wordpress, ..., ?), or when you try to write unit tests for highly coupled classes such as Controllers or Models.

Basically, the technique involves tricking the Dispatcher into not rendering based on the $_GET values by making it think that it's being asked for the favicon.ico file.