Yii is an open source and MVC design-based PHP Framework that makes it easier to develop web applications, especially those involving e-commerce. It comes with prebuilt modules that allow developers to focus on their core business while leaving them with the flexibility to add custom features if necessary.
As we know Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern is a software design pattern that attempts to separate the user interface from the application logic. Yii framework provides a simple way to implement the MVC design pattern and has some built-in conventions for separating UI elements from business logic.
In Yii, the model represents the data stored in the database and the controller manages interactions between the model and view. Views are HTML documents that are rendered by controllers. Models are classes responsible for mapping database rows to objects that represent them.
Controllers are actions that perform tasks on models and return views. A controller performs three tasks:
- fetching models from the model layer
- rendering views based on the models returned and
- performing validation checks before submitting changes to the server.
Worldwide community support -
Yii has a huge and supporting community. Yii Community is a group of awesome people who love to share knowledge about all things web-related problems and solutions for Yii development.
You can install the Yii2 framework using the illustrated and step-by-step instructions described in the article "Yii2 installation using composure method".
Yii framework features -
The following is a list of main features of Yii -
- Active Record Modeling (CRUD), ORM, Data Mapping, Validation
- Caching
- Internationalization & Localization
- Authentication & Authorization
- Form Handling
- Ajax Request/Response
- RSS Feed Reader
- Templating
- Unit Testing
- Command Line Interface
- Multi-language Support
- Web Service API
- RESTful APIs
Why would someone want to use Yii Framework?
There are lots of reasons. Here are just a few of them that have been mentioned below -
- No need to learn how to program (Yii is written in PHP)
- Easier than others
- Fast development speed
- Easy to integrate with other applications
- Simple architecture
- Has lot's of examples and documentation
- Great community around it
- Can work with MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, etc.
- Well-known among developers
- Good open source project
- Many great modules - ZOO
- Active development team
- Lots of extensions