On the Zend Developer Zone there's a recent post from Kevin Schroder (a Tech Evangelist at Zend) about the MVC request lifecycle for the Zend Framework every time an application runs.

When I have done training for Zend Framework, one of the things that mystifies students to some extent is the whole plugin architecture and where things can go. There has been several articles written about it, but they tend to use code to describe it. [...] I had found that when I drew out the request lifecycle that it helped the students understand it better.

His diagram (seen here) lays out the full execution relationship for the request structure including where plugins, action helpers and controllers fit in the mix. He also describes it in more detail, mentioning some of the variations that could happen along the way.

Inspired by Twitto, Phil Sturgeon has create his own tweetable framework to try to "one-up" Fabien Potencier's version.

This idea was not my own, but was inspired by Twitto. During some extreme boredom at work I decided to "one-up" this teeny-tiny framework and improve on it. My framework does this by allowing you to run Controller files and methods in a similar way to CodeIgniter, while Twitto only has the ability to run functions from a single file.

He includes both the code for the "framework" and an example of how to create a simple controller class to work with it. He also shows how you can get a bit more MVC with it by adding in a view layer.

On PHPBuilder.com today there's a new tutorial that walks you through the process of creating a simple MVC framework in PHP based on Smarty, PostgreSQL and the PEAR XML_Serializer package.

PHP now enables you to build robust, manageable, and beautiful enterprise web applications. The best way to do that is to divide the application into three components: model, view, and controller. In other words, you need to separate the presentation, the database, and the business logic from each other. The most common approach for achieving this design goal is to adhere to a strict Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework.

He uses the example of creating an application (a feed reader) to show how the parts of the MVC will fit together as a whole. You won't find any code examples in the article, just an explanation of how everything works together. You can, however, dowload the source and follow along.

Tibo Beijen has a recent post to his blog about using a popular component of the Zend Framework, Zend_Form, without having to use the entire framework to get it.

Most components of Zend Framework can be used without using the entire framework and Zend_Form is no exception. It's a versatile component that can be customized to great extent. The payoff is that seemingly easy tasks can seem quite complex to complete and involve concepts like Decorators and View Helpers. Complexity is increased by the fact that most tasks can be achieved in multiple ways.

He looks at creating a Zend_Form object and using it to: create a simple email field, make a multi-checkbox, add in custom validators to each field, add decorators to the object and render it in a page.

On developer.com today they've posted the third part of their series about getting your own home-brew PHP MVC application framework up and running.

Welcome to the third part of our voyage into the world of MVC. Our mission: To build an MVC framework that is: Simple, Extensible, Lightweight, Versatile, Fast-loading, Self Templating

In this new part the look at exception handling, create a simple "hello world" example and things to watch out for in their simple framework's current state - like the access control issues it might face.

Continuing on from the first part of the series, Marc Plotz forges ahead in his development of a PHP MVC (Model/View/Controller) framework. This new article gives a more complete overview of how the entire framework is structured.

Unlike the previous part, I am not simply giving you the part of the framework that we discuss, but a much more complete version. You will need a MySQL database to run it on, and you will have to setup the connection in application/db.ini.php. My example should guide you. You should not have to do much else than create the database and connect to it.

You can grab the source here and follow along with the tutorial as it steps through bootstrapping and a registry that replaces a "super global" handling method that could cause trouble.

Reinhold Weber recently posted what he calls a "simplified approach to explaining MVC [...] to novice programmers" in this recent post to his blog.

Most MVC tutorials require advanced OOP knowledge or that you are familiar with a full-stack framework. The problem with this approach is the target audience they were intended for. Explaining a design pattern to system architects is preaching to the choir.

He targets those just stepping out into PHP and wanting to find out a better way to structure their code than classes and templates all over the place. He explains what MVC is, why you'd want to use it and includes some basic code to illustrate how it could flow in a simple application.

On the IBM developerWorks site today they've published a new tutorial, the start of a series, from Vikram Vaswani looking at the Agavi framework.

This is the first of a five-part series of articles written for the PHP developer interested in learning about an open-source, flexible, and scalable framework called Agavi. In this first article, you walk through the installation of the framework and the other required components, get an overview of Agavi and its functions, and create your first Web application.

The tutorial looks at installing and configuring the framework and how to get started on a new project (using the agavi command line tool). Screenshots show the resulting output of the command and sample code blocks show the simple structure that's generated. He looks at updates to this basic site including how to display static content and create an overarching "master template" to use as a layout for the whole site.

On the NETTUTS.com site today there's a new (quite comprehensive) article focusing in on the Kohana framework:

Kohana is a PHP 5 framework that uses the Model View Controller (MVC) architectural pattern. There are several reasons why you should choose Kohana but the main ones are security, weightlessness and simplicity. In this tutorial, I'll introduce its main features, and, with a simple demonstration, I'll show you how much time Kohana can potentially save you.

The article covers everything from the download and install out to creating a simple project - a CD collection manager with a MySQL backend. Complete code (including a bit of CSS) is provided for you copy and paste pleasure.

Stefan Mischook is back with another video in his series. This time he looks at a part of the Model/View/Controller framework - the Controller.

In this video, I talk a little about the MVC design pattern with special attention to the middle layer in MVC: the 'controller'. [...] The Controller is the part that brokers the communication between the View and the Model.

If you like the video and want to see more, check out the PHP videos section of his website.