Laminas Project Overview and Getting Started Guide

Laminas is a modern, flexible, and secure PHP framework that's perfect for building robust and scalable applications. Its modular architecture allows you to pick and choose the features you need.

Laminas is built on top of the popular Zend Framework, which has been a industry standard for years. This means you can leverage the expertise and knowledge of the Zend Framework community.

Laminas is designed to be highly extensible, making it easy to add new features and functionality as needed. This is achieved through its plugin architecture, which allows you to easily integrate third-party libraries and tools.

To get started with Laminas, you'll need to have PHP 7.2 or higher installed on your system.

Laminas is officially supported through the Composer package manager.

To start, you'll need to install Laminas using Composer, which will also resolve and install all additional dependencies.

The recommended way to install Laminas is to use the meta-package, which includes 61 components.

However, it's recommended to install required framework components individually, rather than relying on the meta-package.

You can install the MVC package, for example, with the command:

This command will install the MVC package and all its additional dependencies.

Laminas makes it easy to get started, with a clear and straightforward installation process.

Development is a key aspect of Laminas, where rigorous code, documentation, and test standards are enforced.

All code contributions must meet project coding standards, which is a high bar to set but ensures the quality of the code.

Unit tests must reach 80% code coverage before the corresponding code can be moved to the release branch, a metric that developers strive to meet.

This means that every aspect of the code is thoroughly tested, providing confidence in its stability and reliability.

Laminas offers a variety of packages and repositories that cater to different needs.

One notable package is laminas-http, which provides an easy interface for performing HTTP requests. This package has seen 36 commits in the past year and is licensed under BSD-3-Clause.

The Laminas Project also maintains a developer website, laminas.dev, which serves as a central hub for project information. This repository has had 13 commits in the past year and is also licensed under BSD-3-Clause.

Here's a list of some of the notable repositories maintained by Laminas:

These repositories demonstrate the scope and diversity of the Laminas project, covering everything from HTTP requests to email composition and continuous integration.

Packages are collections of software that can be easily installed and managed on a system.

A package typically includes the source code, documentation, and any dependencies required for the software to run.

In Linux, packages are often stored in repositories, which are centralized locations that contain a collection of packages.

Repositories can be local or remote, and they provide a convenient way to install and update software on a system.

Some popular package managers include apt, yum, and pip, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Apt, for example, is a powerful package manager that can handle complex dependencies and provides a high degree of flexibility.

Yum, on the other hand, is a package manager that is specifically designed for RPM-based systems.

Pip is a package manager that is primarily used for installing Python packages.

Repositories are a crucial part of the Laminas project, and they're all publicly available for anyone to access.

You can find a list of these repositories on the Laminas project website, and they're all neatly organized for easy browsing.

Here are some interesting facts about the Laminas repositories:

It's worth noting that some repositories, like laminas-continuous-integration-action, have a relatively low commit activity with 19 commits in the past year, but they're still an important part of the Laminas project.

Mezzio and Laminas are two key components of the Laminas Framework. Laminas Mezzio forms the basis for complex middleware applications, allowing for strong modularization in projects.

The Laminas Framework itself has a solid and proven history, being a fork of Zend released in 2006. It's used in several enterprise applications and provides solutions for almost every problem, following the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.

Laminas Mezzio, on the other hand, is an easy-to-use, PSR-15, PSR-11, PSR-7 compliant middleware atomic micro framework that works nearly out of the box with just a few configurations. This makes Mezzio a great option for developers who want to build complex middleware applications quickly.

Mezzio uses and builds upon standardized components such as PSR-7 and PSR-15, which are defined and published by the PHP Framework Interop Group.

As a middleware framework, Mezzio forms the basis for complex middleware applications, allowing for sequences of middleware components to act between a client's request to a server and the server's response.

Middleware pipelines can be described as sequences where individual middleware components act between a client's request to a server and the server's response to that client.

This concept encourages processing through several middleware components in a sequence, promoting strong modularization in projects.

Mezzio is an easy-to-use, PSR-15, PSR-11, PSR-7 compliant middleware atomic micro framework that works nearly out of the box, with just a few configurations.

It's a stark contrast to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which is highly configurable and requires knowledge about project setup, structure, and architecture.

The Laminas Framework, which includes Mezzio, has a solid and proven history, as a fork of Zend, first released in 2006, and is used in several enterprise applications.

The Linux Foundation is a unique organization that hosts collaboration projects from different companies. It's not typically known for managing projects like the Laminas Framework.

In 2019, the company behind the Zend Framework handed over the project to the Linux Foundation, which took on the financial responsibility and project management. This was a significant move for the project's future.

The Linux Foundation's strategy is to grow a community that will eventually take over and drive the project forward. This approach allows the project to thrive independently of any one company.

Laminas is licensed under the Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved New BSD License.

All new contributions are required to be accompanied with a Developer Certificate of Origin affirmation.

The licensing policy was established to prevent intellectual property issues for commercial users, as stated by Zend's Andi Gutmans.

ZF1 contributors were required to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) based on the Apache Software Foundation’s CLA.

ZF2 and later is CLA free.

Laminas includes various components, a full list of which can be found in the Laminas Framework documentation.

Mezzio and Laminas rely on the following components to function efficiently.

Mezzio is built on top of Zend Framework 2, which means it inherits its modular design and flexibility.

Laminas is a modular framework that provides a set of reusable components for building web applications.

Mezzio's components are designed to work seamlessly with each other, allowing developers to easily swap out or add new components as needed.

The versioning of Mezzio and Laminas is managed through the Laminas Project, which ensures that both frameworks stay up-to-date and compatible with each other.

The latest major version of Laminas is 3.0, which is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, Zend Framework 2.

Mezzio 3.x is the latest version of the framework, and it's designed to work with Laminas 3.0 and later versions.

Developers can choose to use either Mezzio 3.x or Laminas 3.0, depending on their specific needs and goals.

Both Mezzio and Laminas are designed to be highly customizable, allowing developers to extend or modify their components as needed.

The modular design of Laminas makes it easy to swap out or add new components, which can be a significant advantage for developers.

In Mezzio and Laminas, code contributions are held to high standards. Code must meet project coding standards.

All code contributions are thoroughly reviewed to ensure they meet the required standards. Unit tests must reach 80% code coverage before the corresponding code can be moved to the release branch.

This ensures that every piece of code is thoroughly tested and meets the expected quality standards.