Instant Yii 1.1 Application Development Starter

Jacob Mumm, Mark Safronov

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781782161684
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatica
• Subtopic: Programmazione open source

In Detail

PHP is one of the most popular languages for building web sites and applications. While the Yii framework came a little bit later to the PHP scene, it has taken a lot of the best practices from around the Web and put it all into a single, awesome framework for making custom web apps.

Yii 1.1 Application Development Starter is a straightforward, hands-on look at what is rapidly becoming one of the most revered frameworks for custom web application development. The Yii framework follows a tried and true object-oriented software development pattern called Model-View-Controller, making it quick and easy to build database driven applications.

This book takes you through everything you need to know to get set up and rolling with the Yii framework. You will learn how to plan and start your application and how to take it where you want to go with the tools and extensions available with the Yii framework.

This book will teach you how to build an application from the ground up, how to make sure you have everything you need in your hosting environment and get the Yii framework installed, how to create a strong relational database design, and how to set up model classes for your tables. You will also learn how to generate CRUD code to add/remove, view, and list records from your tables, then add custom routes, widgets, and extensions to make a robust application. Additionally, you will learn how to integrate authentication and role-based access permissions throughout your site.

With this book, you will learn everything you need to get started with web application development using the Yii PHP framework.

Approach

Get to grips with a new technology, understand what it is and what it can do for you, and then get to work with the most important features and tasks. A concise guide that delivers immediate results with practical recipes that give you useful hints and tips on avoiding the pitfalls in Eclipse 4 development.

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at developers with some basic programming experience and a general understanding of relational databases, or anyone who is ready to take their development to the next level with framework-driven development. A basic understanding of MySQL, PHP, HTML, and HTTP is expected.

Instant Yii 1.1 Application Development Starter

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Instant Yii 1.1 Application Development Starter

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: June 2013

Production Reference: 1300513

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78216-168-4

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Credits

Authors

Jacob Mumm

Mark Safronov

Reviewer

Sergey Malyshev

Acquisition Editor

Andrew Duckworth

Kunal Parikh

Commissioning Editor

Harsha Bharwani

Technical Editor

Varun Pius Rodrigues

Project Coordinator

Deenar Satam

Proofreader

Paul Hindle

Graphics

Abhinash Sahu

Production Coordinator

Prachali Bhiwandkar

Cover Work

Prachali Bhiwandkar

Cover Image

Conidon Miranda

About the Authors

Jacob Mumm is a web developer from Upstate New York specializing in PHP and JavaScript web applications. He has worked for non-profit organizations, advertising companies, and schools using tools such as Drupal, jQuery (including UI and Mobile), AngularJS, and the Yii Framework. His interests range from outdoor activities such as hiking, camping, and kayaking, to organic food and gardening as part of a holistic, sustainable lifestyle, all the while staying up to date with the latest gadgets, gizmos, and web application technologies.

One of the things he deeply enjoys is talking to people about the things for which he has the most passion. He likes to share his knowledge and experience with others. Even when incomplete, Jacob finds the act of consolidating his thoughts on a subject a great way to solidify his own understanding or to discover places where he needs to investigate further.

This book is dedicated to Joseph Fitzsimmons, because he has heard me explain quite a lot of things in recent years. Joe is a good friend who I have had the pleasure of watching and helping grow from someone fiddling with HTML to a degree-holding, up-and-coming web programmer. Joe embodies the target audience for this book, as he has the basis for technical understanding and is ready to take the next step into framework-driven development. This book was written largely by me pretending to be explaining things to Joe.

Mark Safronov is a professional web application developer from the Russian Federation with experience and interest in a wide range of programming languages and technologies. He has built and participated in building different types of web applications, from purely computational ones to full-blown e-commerce sites. He is also a proponent of following the current best practices for test-first development and clean and maintainable code.

He is currently employed at Clevertech, and is working on Yii-based PHP web applications and maintaining a quite popular YiiBooster open source extension.

Back in 2008, he translated the book Visual Prolog 7.1 for Tyros by Eduardo Costa in to Russian.

About the Reviewer

Sergey Malyshev is an IT specialist from Ukraine. He has been working in the IT industry for more than 15 years, 8 years of which he has devoted to the development of web applications. Out of conviction that it's impossible to become a great specialist in all areas at the same time, he has chosen for himself PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript as top priority directions. During his career, Sergey took part in developing dozens of different websites, social networks, CMS, CRM, and ERP systems. He was not only a developer, but also an architect, a project manager, and a technical consultant. Apart from participating in the realization of some technical projects, he also organized various advanced training courses for IT specialists in the companies where he was employed. As he has a degree in management, Sergey took part in the business process automation of companies specializing in software development.

At present, Sergey holds the position of a software engineer in the company SugarCRM and deals with the development of one of the most popular customer relationship management systems in the world. Before that, he worked on the development of applications based on Yii Framework. These include the search engine for real estate company livingthere.com and the corporate CMS system WebModulite for New York design agency Blue Fountain Media. Participation in these projects and also work on his own extension for debugging Yii applications, YiiDebugToolbar, has helped Sergey get vast experience and expert knowledge of Yii Framework.

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Chapter 1. Instant Yii 1.1 Application Development Starter

Welcome to Instant Yii 1.1 Application Development Starter. This book has been designed as a crash course in web application development with the Yii Framework. You will learn a step-by-step approach to building database-driven websites utilizing the features and extensions available in Yii.

This book contains the following sections:

So, what is Yii? – In this section, we'll start with a short review of what the Yii framework is, how it got started, and the overall benefits you'll get when you start using it.

Installation – In this section, we'll install Yii Framework and kickstart your first "Hello World" application with it.

Quick start – Given the automatically-generated example application, we extend it to be a rudimentary blog according to the blog example from the Yii website, while also learning a lot of the most important concepts in Yii along the way.

Top 5 features you need to know about – In this section, we continue the practical examples and we explore some not so obvious details and tricks of the framework, which can really help you in developing your application.

People and places – Lastly, we'll see where to seek help and how to get to know the quite vast Yii community.

So, what is Yii?

Yii is an open source framework for web applications built with the PHP scripting language. It was first released late in 2008 to a world bustling with frameworks vying for market share. Although it entered the game somewhat late, this turned out to be an advantage as its creator, Qiang Xue, was able to include some of the best features of existing products in Yii. Also, the lessons he learned as a developer for the Prado framework helped him to build a superior solution. Today, Yii is widely heralded as one of the top PHP web frameworks. You can read more about it at http://www.yiiframework.com.

As opposed to the Content Management Systems (CMS), it is not a complete skeleton of your website, which is configurable by some sort of graphical user interface. You have probably heard the names Joomla! and Drupal, which are particularly f...

Table of contents

• Instant Yii 1.1 Application Development Starter