1. October 2011
Skynet in ZF 2.0
Or, better put “what one can do with ZendCode”

2. Who Am I?
•Ralph Schindler (ralphschindler)
Software Engineer on the Zend Framework team
•At Zend for almost 4 years
•Before that TippingPoint/3Com
Programming PHP for 13+ years
Live in New Orleans, LA.
•Lived in Austin, Tx for 5 years
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3. Why Skynet?
•From wikipedia:
“ ... an artificially intelligent system which
became self-aware and revolted against its
creators.”
“The strategy behind Skynet's creation was to
remove the possibility of human error and slow
reaction time to guarantee fast, efficient response
to enemy attack.”
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4. Why Skynet?
•So, ... who is the enemy?
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5. Why Skynet?
•Other enemies (without photo’s)
Unmaintainable applications
Untestable applications
Slow applications
Un-fun / boring code
Painful code
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6. Why Skynet?
•So, what does Skynet look like?
•Anything we develop that looks
too magical
too-good-to-be-true
too all-encompassing
too flexible / too many input types
requires too much documentation
is outside our normal understanding of how things
work
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7. Why Skynet?
•What does Skynet not look like?
Simple
Easy to understand
Finite inputs / outputs
Easy to get up and running with
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8. Why Skynet
•In a nutshell: PHP
PHP has no development time compile phase
On it’s own, it doesn’t know much
•Hence, the many upon many frameworks
All decisions are pushed into “request” time
Single strategy for performance increase
•caching
•black-box optimizer
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9. Why Skynet?
•Basically, ZendCode is Skynet (figuratively)
it can understand your code, sometimes better
than the developer whom wrote it
it can expose information about your code that the
developer was unaware of
it can generate code faster than you can
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10. Why Skynet?
•Ok, not really
•ZendCode will not:
see developers as a threat
attempt to take over the world
send the Terminator (a.k.a Matthew Weier
O’Phinney) after you for writing bad,
unmaintainable, code
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11. Who is the Terminator?
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12. What does ZendCode Do?
•So, what does ZendCode do?
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13. Let’s Recap the Humble Beginnings
•ZF1 users wanted scaffolding & RAD
•So, ...
Zend_Tool
•Zend_Tool_Project / Zend_Tool_Framework
Zend_CodeGenerator
•original intention was more than PHP
Zend_Reflection
•added docblock parsing functionality
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14. ZF1 Problem Area
•This setup suffered from 2 major problems:
Runtime dependencies are not always loaded
Same request changes to structures do not update
in-memory structures
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15. Problem 1
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16. Problem 2
•Workflow (in the same request):
Require File
Build ZendCodeGenerator object based off Zend
Reflection object of a class
•(For example a controller)
Add method to class
Write to disk
Build ZendCodeGenerator object based off Zend
Reflection object
•FAIL! B/c file is already in memory
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17. Problem 2 - Temporary Solution
•Temporary solution was to cache generator
objects that were built based one particular
reflection objects, and return those when asked
for a generator object seeded with a known
reflection object
•“We’ll fix this in ZF2”
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18. Other Realizations
•We were not going to get other generator types
•Generators were closely related to Reflection
and the new Scanner component
•ZendCode was a better place for all of this
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19. Static vs. Dynamic
•Runtime
Static - Fast
Dynamic - Slow
•Dev-time
Static - slower workflow
Dynamic - workflow resembles runtime
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20. Static vs. Dynamic
•Typical PHP workflow for dynamic applications:
initiate request
fulfill request
return to consumer
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21. Static vs. Dynamic
•Typical PHP workflow for “static” applications
with compilation built in (dev time):
initiate request
compile (during request, but omitted during production)
fulfill request
return to consumer
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22. Static vs. Dynamic
•Typical PHP workflow for “static” applications
with compilation NOT built in (dev time):
(change code)
(compile code)
initiate request
fulfill request
return to consumer
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23. Static vs. Dynamic
•You’ve probably seen static analysis in some way before:
Caching
•If you never intend on expiring the data, it’s not really a cache
if (!file_exists(..)) { file_put_contents(..., var_export()) }
Zend Optimizer / APC
Content Platforms:
•Drupal
– development mode
– non-caching mode
– module initialization
•Wordpress
– installation hooks: plugin initialization
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24. What are we compiling?
•Anything dynamically looked up
What the valid routes are
What the valid application assets are
•classes
•view scripts
Where particular classes are located
More?
•Which extensions are loaded
•What the php environment can support
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25. So, What Is Our Toolset?
•ZendCode
ZendCodeReflection
ZendCodeGenerator
ZendCodeScanner
ZendCodeAnnotation
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26. ZendCodeReflection
•Originally part of ZF1
•Added features:
file reflection
docblock reflection
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27. ZendCodeReflection
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28. ZendCodeReflection cont’
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29. ZendCodeGenerator
•Originally ZF 1’s ZendCodeGenerator
•Built OO Classes with an OO API
Mainly consumed by Zend_Tool
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30. ZendCode
Generator
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31. ZendCodeScanner
•ZendCodeScanner
Token based “reflection”
Reflection for files in ZF1 has a similar approach
Ascertain information in files:
•what namespaces are inside this file
•what use statements are inside a particular namespace
•what classes are in this file’s namespaces
•what files are required (none, right?)
•is there a file level docblock
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32. ZendCodeScanner Class Hierarchy
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33. ZendCode
Scanner (Sample)
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34. ZendCodeAnnotation
•Annotations
Why? You asked for it. At least some of you did.
There’s no native PHP support for it
Similar to:
•Java’s Annotation system
•C#’s Attribute system
•Doctrine’s Annotation system
•with a PHP twist of course
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35. ZendCodeAnnotation
•Design:
Do not force content into a particular DSL
Build as a simple easy to use framework for easy consumption
Prototype pattern
Use ZendCodeScanner
•Drawbacks
Slow, very very slow
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36. ZendCodeAnnotation
•Single Interface to implement:
ZendCodeAnnotationAnnotation
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37. ZendCodeAnnotationManager
•Simple Manager to Populate:
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38. Demo 1: ZendCodeScanner
•Find all dependencies in a directory full of code
•Demo
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39. Demo 2: Built a Micro-framework
•Goals
Find on github.com/ralphschindler/middlewarephp
few classes - the “middleware” is editable
fast (2ms request for hello world)
compilation based
•Routes
•Classmap autoloader
annotation based
utilize include returns, closures, and arrays
•Demo
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40. Philisophical
•Let’s get philosophical:
Should we be “compiling” elements?
•Is this what PHP is all about?
•Rasmus says yes.
Can we architect flexible and performant
applications without some kind of static code
analysis that affects runtime?
How do we introduce these tasks into developer
workflows where they make the most sense, don’t
impede development?
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41. Fin
•Questions and/or comments, let’s go grab a beer discuss.
•Remember ZF2 is only beta, if you have opinions on how we
should go about applying these techniques, get involved NOW!
•Thank you!
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