Archives For yii

Online Yii Resources

November 17, 2009

I’ve been writing quite a bit about the Yii framework for PHP lately and thought a listing of useful resources would be in order. Yii is still a relatively new framework, so there’s not a lot out there, but people are taking an interest in the framework and making a point to share what they learn, which is always a good sign. To start, there’s the stuff at Yii’s site:

  • The Definitive Guide to Yii, which is a descriptive overview of most of Yii’s features. This is a very accessible way to get into Yii.
  • The Yii Cookbook, with lots of useful little recipes. Great for learning how to expand your application.
  • The Blog Tutorial, which walks through the creation of a blog using Yii. Easy to follow, but not applicable to everything you’ll do.
  • Yii Framework Class Reference, which details every class in the framework. This is the ultimate source for using the framework from a syntax perspective, but isn’t as easy to read and apply to your own code.
  • The Yii Forum, for help and seeing what other people are doing.

All of the above are obviously linked on Yii’s own documentation page. That page also lists a Yii Cheat Sheet, plus some screen- and podcasts.

In working with Yii, I’ve also come across these writings:

Jonah’s Thoughts on PHP and Things Related has a handful of posts on Yii. They’re all from late-2008 and early-2009, so they’re getting to be a bit outdated but are still worth a read.

Kevin Korb has quite a few posts on Yii, specifically Yii+MySQL, plus a video tutorial on installing Yii on Mac OS X.

There’s a fairly long tutorial for beginners at SterlingSavvy.com.

My recommendation would be to start with the Definitive Guide, then move onto the other sources to help get a sense of a real-world use of those ideas.

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Basic Controller Edits in Yii

November 15, 2009
This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Learning the Yii Framework

After using Yii‘s command-line and Gii tools to build an application’s base structure, and then to create its Models and crud functionality, there’s still quite a bit of customizing to do (although Yii really does perform the bulk of the work). Previous posts discuss some of the common changes one makes to Models and Views at this point in the development stage; here I’ll discuss Controllers. I have personally found that I don’t make nearly the level of alterations to my auto-generated Controllers as I do to my Models and Views. This makes sense, as the Model should have the bulk of the code, the View is the interface the end user sees, and the Controller is largely an agent between the two (see [intlink id=”453″ type=”post”]my series on the MVC architecture[/intlink] for more on this).

(Note: In October 2010, I’ve updated this entire series to reflect changes in Yii since this series was written, and to take into account feedback provided through the comments. Some outdated material will be crossed out, but left in to reflect how things have changed since the series was begun in June 2009.)

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Basic View Edits in Yii

November 12, 2009
This entry is part 7 of 8 in the series Learning the Yii Framework

This is the seventh post in my series on Yii, my favorite PHP framework. In this post, I walk through some basic View edits you’ll make to the code auto-generated by the Yii framework. For some of the code, I’ll be using the employees-departments example I’ve been developing throughout these posts. You may want to reread earlier posts to get a handle on those.

(Note: In October 2010, I’ve updated this entire series to reflect changes in Yii since this series was written, and to take into account feedback provided through the comments. Some outdated material will be crossed out, but left in to reflect how things have changed since the series was begun in June 2009.)

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Basic Model Edits in Yii

November 10, 2009
This entry is part 6 of 8 in the series Learning the Yii Framework

This is the sixth post in my series on Yii, my favorite PHP framework. [intlink id=”473″ type=”post”]In the first[/intlink], I show how to download and test the framework itself. [intlink id=”563″ type=”post”]In the second[/intlink], I show how to create a basic Web application.[intlink id=”583″ type=”post”] In the third[/intlink], I walk through some configuration options. [intlink id=”607″ type=”post”]In the fourth[/intlink], I explain my database design, and how you should define it with Yii in mind. [intlink id=”622″ type=”post”]In the fifth[/intlink], I show how to use Yii’s Gii tool to create Models, Views, and Controllers in your Yii application. In this post, I walk through some of the basic edits you’ll likely make to a Model after it’s been created by Yii’s Gii tool. In doing so, you’ll also get a general introduction to the Yii Model as a whole. For some of the code, I’ll be using the employees-departments example I’ve been developing throughout these posts. You may want to reread earlier posts to get a handle on those.

(Note: In October 2010, I’ve updated this entire series to reflect changes in Yii since this series was written, and to take into account feedback provided through the comments. Some outdated material will be crossed out, but left in to reflect how things have changed since the series was begun in June 2009.)

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Creating Models, Views, and Controllers in Yii

November 7, 2009
This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Learning the Yii Framework

This is the fifth post in my series on Yii, my favorite PHP framework. [intlink id=”473″ type=”post”]In the first[/intlink], I show how to download and test the framework itself. [intlink id=”563″ type=”post”]In the second[/intlink], I show how to create a basic Web application.[intlink id=”583″ type=”post”] In the third[/intlink], I walk through some configuration options. [intlink id=”607″ type=”post”]In the fourth[/intlink], I explain the database design to be used by the sample application that this and the subsequent posts discuss. In this post, I show how to use Yii’s Gii tool to create Models, Views, and Controllers in your Yii application. This post does assume you have an existing application to work with, most likely by following the steps in my previous posts.

(Note: In October 2010, I’ve updated this entire series to reflect changes in Yii since this series was written, and to take into account feedback provided through the comments. Some outdated material will be crossed out, but left in to reflect how things have changed since the series was begun in June 2009. This post had the heaviest revisions, as the command-line tools were replaced by the Web-based Gii.)

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