The Zend Framework team announces the immediate availability of a preview release of version 1.9.0:

http://framework.zend.com/download/latest

Note that because these packages are not stable, they will not be found on the zend.com CDN; please scroll to the bottom of the above page to find links to this release.

This preview release showcases many of the new features that will be available in the upcoming stable release:

  • Zend_Rest_Route

    ,

    Zend_Rest_Controller

    , and

    Zend_Controller_Plugin_PutHandler

    , which aid in providing RESTful resources via the MVC layer.

  • Zend_Feed_Reader

    , which provides a common API to RSS and Atom feeds, as well as extensions to each format, caching, and a slew of other functionality.

  • Zend_Queue

    and

    Zend_Service_Amazon_Sqs

    , which provide the ability to use local and remote messaging and queue services for offloading asynchronous processes.

  • Zend_Db_Table

    updates to allow using

    Zend_Db_Table

    as a concrete class by passing it one or more table definitions via the constructor.

  • Annotation processing support for
    Zend_Pdf

    , as well as performance improvements.

  • Zend_Dojo

    custom build layer support.

  • Numerous
    Zend_Ldap

    improvements.

  • Zend_Log_Writer_Syslog

    , a

    Zend_Log

    writer for writing to your system log.

  • Several new view helpers, including
    Zend_View_Helper_BaseUrl

    .

The 1.9.0 release is shaping up quickly, and we expect to launch a beta late next week, with a stable release a week or so later.

Again, this is a preview release; do not use it in production environments. Do, however, test it thoroughly and let us know what is and is not working for you so we can deliver a solid release with 1.9.0!