To install the Zend Framework, we must first install the Composer and the latest version of PHP as shown in the following steps.
- Install Composer − Zend uses Composer for managing its dependencies, so make sure you have the Composer installed on your machine. If the Composer is not installed, then visit the official website of Composer and install it.
- Install the latest version of PHP − To get the maximum benefit of Zend Framework, install the latest version of PHP. The minimum required version for the Zend Framework 3 is PHP 5.6 or later.
Install Zend Framework
Zend Framework can be installed in two ways. They are as follows −
- Manual installation
- Composer based installation
Let us discuss both these installations in detail.
Manual Installation
Download the latest version of Zend Framework by visiting the following link – https://framework.zend.com/downloads/archives
Extract the content of the downloaded archive file to the folder you would like to keep it. Once you have a copy of Zend Framework available in your local machine, your Zend Framework based web application can access the framework classes. Though there are several ways to achieve this, your PHP include_path needs to contain the path to the Zend Framework classes under the /library directory in the distribution. This method applies to Zend Framework version 2.4 and earlier only.
Composer Based Installation
To easily install the Zend Framework, use the Composer tool. This is the preferred method to install the latest version of Zend Framework. To install all the components of the Zend Framework, use the following Composer command −
$ composer require zendframework/zendframework
Each Zend Framework module / component can be installed individually as well. For example, to install the MVC component of the Zend Framework, use the following composer command −
$ composer require zendframework/zend-mvc