On Saturday, April 12th, 2014, I passed the Zend Framework v1 certification exam. This is a legacy test sourced from version 1.5 of the Zend framework.
The Zend’s framework exam is a difficult test to study for because, despite its age (and unlike Zend’s PHP language certification), there isn’t as much study material available. I found Zend’s official study guide to be the most helpful along with reading through the 1.5 edition of the manual.
I used the following documents to study for the exam:
- The official Zend Framework certification study guide (pdf). This boiled down version of the manual gives a concise overview of potential exam material.
- Zend’s official exam topic list. I took note of the classes mentioned and memorized their interfaces.
- Rob Allen’s Zend Framework Certification (a refresher) from ZendCon 2009 (pdf). Distilled to 99 pages, this guide was an essential short overview. I used it for my final week of review prep.
- The 1.5 version of the manual. It tends to drag on but it’s a good reference with code examples for unfamiliar or under-used components. I swapped between this and Zend’s study guide for my initial prep work.
The Zend Framework is quite large and I went into the exam feeling like I could use an extra week of study. I also felt like a historian while reviewing the APIs of services from companies now out of business. Despite this legacy aspect, I’m appreciative that Zend is still offering this test and I’m happy to have taken it.
My next certification will be for Magento Developer Plus, an e-commerce platform that uses Zend Framework v1 for part of its core. I’m glad I invested my time into the framework exam because I believe it will help me learn Magento development more quickly.