There has to be an easier way :(

So I’m working on a project, and I want to find all of the rows that don’t have a row in it’s related table using Zend_Db_Table_Select… Simple right? Not really . In theory this would be the query that I would write…
SELECT author.id FROM author LEFT JOIN project ON project.author_id = author.id WHERE project.author_id [...]

Non-existant fields Zend_Db_Table_Abstract

I’d run into a problem in the Zend Table where when inserting data from a form, if a field didn’t exist in the database ZF would crap out with an exception. Having to unset posted variables I didn’t need, meant more typing, more typing meant more unnecessary code.
I found the easiest way to get around [...]