Question

i am developing a Rest Controller using Zend Framework and i have to use an external php class in one of my action methods of the controller. How can i add this class or access it from my controller action method?

Do i need to write a custom library?

In my controller action method, iam fetching the polygon information from the database. Now i have an external php class that can validate whether a point is inside the polygon.

Googling on this issue, i found that we can write custom library classes for this sake. But iam unsure about this. So i want to know how can i include this external functionality in my controller action.
Please guide.

Answer 1

The simplest approach would be to just include the class, e.g.

class PolygonController …
    public function someAction()
    {
        include 'path/to/class/file.php';
        $pointLocation = new pointLocation;

        // do something $pointLocation;
    }

You can probably load this file with Zend_Loader or the Autoloader as well, but since the class name does’t follow the Pear/ZF naming convention, the easiest is this. It doesn’t matter where you put the actual class file as long as it is accessible somehow.

---

Since this is a third party class, you could extend it to make it match the ZF/Pear naming convention. Then place it into your library folder, so you can use the Autoloader:

<?php
include 'path/to/class/file.php';
class My_PointLoader extends pointLoader {}

This file would be placed in APPLICATION_ROOT/lib/My/PointLoader.php

And in your bootstrap, register your "My_" namespace with

$autoloader->registerNamespace('My_');

Then you can do $pointLoader = new My_PointLoader; in your controller and the autoloader will take care of including the file.

---

Or, when you want to add functionality or change the API of the class, aggregate it with an Adapter, e.g.

<?php
include 'path/to/class/file.php';
class My_PointLoader_Adapter
{
    protected $_pointLoader;
    public function __construct(pointLoader $pointLoader = NULL)
    {
        if($pointLoader === NULL) {
            $pointLoader = new pointLoader;
        }
        $this->_pointLoader = new pointLoader;
    }
    public function someAdapterMethod($foo)
    {
        $this->_pointLoader->someMethodInPointLoader($foo);
    }
    // … more methods
}

Then add the namespace prefix as shown above, so the Autoloader handles inclusion.