ZendFramework integration with other frameworks

I want to make this question a guide for those interested in [ZendFramework][1] integration with other libraries/frameworks. Searching over StackOverflow doesn't give a broad view on the subject.

The question is: which libraries/frameworks do you use in your current ZF-based project? what are the best practices for ZF-based project architecture?

I don't mean any components that are *already* a part of ZF. Please give a description of **aditional** frameworks you have integrated (like [RuckUsing][2], [Smarty][3], or [Doctrine][4]). It also applies to any GUI frameworks (perhaps you use a CSS framework), as well as JS frameworks (not just [jQuery][5] or [prototype][6], but rather some advanced structures).

The main requirement: it has to be a ZendFramework project.

Additional bonus will be given to answers that describe performance optimization.

__UPDATE__

Every answer as informative as @BryanM's will be considered for additional bounty award.

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I use Doctrine 2 in my Zend Framework projects. It's easy to use and fits in seamlessly. The basic steps to integrate it are:

- Write a resource plugin that will initialize a Doctrine 2 EntityManager using configurations options in `application.ini`. An example of one can be found in Benjamin Eberlei's [DoctrineExtensions](

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).
- Rather than rely on a global registry (`Zend_Registry`) to store the EntityManager reference, I rely on a simple depedency injection solution as [described here](

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) to provde the instance to my controllers.
- I rely on Doctrine's Event system to create re-usable 'behavior' classes to do things like update timestamps or validate data.
- I keep all my Entities and business objects in my application's 'models' folder (under it's own namespace), and everything else in in my `library` folder. I heavily use PHP 5.3 namespaces to keep things organized.
- I use Doctrine's new-ish Migrations library to handle updates to the database via the command line.
- I also highly recommend creating a detailed build process in [Phing](

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) in order to handle library dependencies, automated unit testing and running migrations that can be integrated into source control or a CI Server. Also good for compiling Javascript or CSS if you're using one of those frameworks.

These practices aren't just good for Doctrine, they'll be handy anytime you're trying to built a site's architecture. I think that Zend's biggest assets in extensibility are Resource plugins and ActionHelpers / Controller Plugins.

Also remember [HtmlPurifier](

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) for HTML sanitization, typically parsing user-provided markup, based upon a whitelist of allowable tags, and producing standards-compliant output markup.

It can be used as a first line of defense against XSS attacks. Note that `Zend_Filter_StripTags` is [_not_ sufficient](

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) for this purpose.

- ZendX_JQuery (a tutorial is available on [zendcast.com][1]).


- Although, it's a ruby application, we use [webistrano][2] to deploy php projects.


- If your web application has to do full-text search on a large scale, i would use sphinx in combination with zend ([sorgalla.com][3]).
- If you want to use those new NoSQL-Databases like MongoDB, you could use [morph][4] as high level php-library. I just copied the files to 'library' and told the autoloader to load the files: autoloaderNamespaces[] = "Morph_".

- [ZF_Debug][5] is a nice debugging toolbar for development.


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