For the longest time, I had no real invoicing
system for my independent contract work. I just never found anything
that I really liked and rarely found the inspiration to go looking. But
recently, I got in the mood to find a long-term solution. What I found
was a lot of hosted solutions, a lot of closed source ‘for-purchase’
solutions, and a lot of second-rate software.
Once you
understand all the basic concepts of writing programs, the practice of
software development can sometimes devolve into a simple exercise in
pattern recognition. If you catch yourself writing the same code more
than once or twice, you’re probably doing something wrong. Here’s an
example that will apply particularly to those of us who use the Zend
Framework.
Typically, in a web application following MVC design principles, there are patterns that emerge from your actions. Patterns like access control, detecting special requests and responding appropriately, preparing pagination controls, etc. The Zend Framework and other frameworks provide abstract classes to handle the basics, but they’re meant to be extended to suit your own application.
Make sure you have your own ./library folder within your application that’s on your php include path and create a directory structure for your extended action class beginning with a namespace of your choice. I’m using Crozz. Here’s a skeleton that I’ve paced in ./library/Crozz/Controller/Action.php: