What are the pros and cons of using Yii Framework?

A framework can be massively productive for any developer who intends to build compliant, structured and efficient web apps in minimal time. In today’s time, as developers, we have a plethora of diverse frameworks regardless of the language we are programming in. The YII framework, however, is by far one of the most result-oriented, secure web frameworks to depend upon. It is designed for and by PHP to provide better developer experience through its features and better user experience through its end product.

Agreed, it may not be the one of the popular PHP frameworks for web development, it is surely one of the most promising open-source web app development frameworks. Below are some prominent advantages and disadvantages that come with YII, they are worth having a glance at.

Pros:

 The open source YII is undoubtedly the fastest framework for building Web2.0 applications (large scale). It renders a highly optimized performance, and can seamlessly be employed by developers for designing any kind of web applications. The generic web programming framework makes web development an enriched, intuitive experience (using PHP), and is perfectly suitable for large scale web applications - including e-commerce projects, forums, web portals, content management systems, RESTful services, and more.

 The MVC architecture of Yii helps the PHP web developers in crafting technically a smart web application. It helps in keeping the database server isolated from the view state of the application making it cleaner and effective. The Controller of the frameworks helps in managing different packages and libraries of the frameworks efficiently so that, the code pressure will decrease from the developer. It makes the whole system work as an object where a little tweak on the codebase will modify the entire system simultaneously. Any modification, addition, alters or deletion will be performed in a single line code and it will be visible throughout the application. At the same time, it provides a systematic approach to handle any application building process.

 Integrated with a Model-View-Controller structure, YII provides a horde of security features to ensure the highest degree of security to your application. Security plays the most important role in today’s world; because, more number of websites are dealing with sensitive informations like user data, their transaction history and also their personal credentials etc. So it must be given maximum priority in any web application. Fortunately, Yii comes with security features such as Cross-site Request Forgery Prevention, Cross-site Scripting Prevention and Cookie Attack Prevention. Since it is very significant for web developers to ensure thorough security for their app development, the framework comes embedded with authentication support, and authorization through hierarchical role-based access control. There is client side and server side validation as well, which developers can enable or disable as per their project requirements.

 The framework stands distinguished for its ability to function smoothly with third party codes. Users can seamlessly use code from their Zend or Pear framework in their Yes It Is (YII’s extended form) framework. This is like an ice on the cake; because this helps in increasing the potential of any web solution in an efficient yet professional manner. Imagine, a web application having the power of both Zend and Yii or of both Laravel and Yii!! They can definitely stand ahead among their peers and can contribute more to the PHP developer.

 Web developers also admire its clean, elegant caching support, and component-based architecture. For a developer, YII’s philosophy that code should be simple, and be written in the sophisticated manner works great. With caching, a smart web developer can build highly optimized web applications on the fly. In fact, considering a recent scenario where most of the web traffic are coming from smart devices; it becomes essential for every web developer to consider their website as a cross platform compatible one. Again, since their web app will render over smart phones, so they must be optimized enough so as to render similar user experience in all these memory intensive devices and platforms and fortunately Yii takes care of this wisely.

 It also offers ActiveRecord for relational as well as NoSQL databases, not to forget the query builders feature that YII provides. The tool further highlights its some of the most efficient caching features - letting users store cached data in different media. YII paves the way with an extremely solid yet seamless caching system, and lends support to XCache, memcache, ABC, and DB based page.

 YII framework is supremely easy to customize or check over, owing to its simple code structure. This enables developers to use varied widgets and extensions depending upon their web project requirements. At the same time, it is thoroughly object oriented - making it an ideal choice for anyone who is versed in object oriented web programming.

 The framework provides web developers with neat Ajax helpers, particularly with Grid view, and CRUD generator using Gii. Its Bootstrap extension support simplifies the whole process of creating responsive applications while integrated support for I18N allows users to have localized versions of their applications.

 Another significant advantage that YII has over most other programming frameworks is its large community support. The framework is supported and looked after by an extremely efficient team of professionals that consistently contribute to YII’s growth and development. The community pegs away at constantly integrating new features and advanced practices into the core framework - helping it evolve into a more sophisticated, performance oriented web application framework.

Cons:

 As a framework, YII does not come flooded with too many minuses. However, there is a portion of developers that steer clear of using YII as a framework for their web programming needs. To begin with, YII reveals kind of an over-reliance on static methods (a part of web developers community may not be comfortable with it).

 It is believed that YII demands extreme attention while one works with their application, for their code can quickly become bloated if proper care is not taken.

 The framework further has a somewhat steep learning curve, making it operose for new web developers to use or get started with.

Our word

Yes, YII framework does come with a few disadvantages, however, it is extremely powerful as a tool for developing a layered, structured web design. Some amazing attributes such as security, extensibility, theme organization, error handling, and integration with other frameworks make YII a great choice for web app development. We would highly recommend it!

Mindfire Solutions provides expert offshore PHP development services from India, gaining its expertise from years of experience in PHP web development and PHP application development. We have been working in PHP for the last 8+ years and have gained expertise on various PHP application development frameworks and PHP services.

Laravel taking the PHP community by storm - Few reasons

Laravel is the new PHP framework on the block that is hailed as ‘frameworks for the artisans.’ It has emerged as a fresh gust of wind for the developers who want to enjoy their creative work. It is a classy and clean framework that liberates the PHP developers from the complex spaghetti codes. Yet Laravel helps to come up with impressive applications by utilizing expressive as well as lucid syntax. Although there are experts who opine that all the frameworks are equal and choosing one is merely a personal preference. But when it comes to Laravel the primary reason for its popularity lies in the fact that it enjoys support from a huge community of developers.

Developers generally opt for an open source mainly because there is an active and vibrant community that keeps coming up with popular ideas. This, in turn, helps in creating a rich ecosystem of code snippets, modules, etc. Such an ecosystem will always beat a database created by a certain company. The richness of the database depends on the size of the community. Thankfully, Laravel has a huge community that keeps on growing with each passing day. In this regard, it is reminiscent of Ruby on Rails that had emerged a few years back.

There are various reasons why this framework is preferred by the developers. Let’s begin with its migrations. For creating a database an application needs a quite simple schema with a 5 columned table. The table is required to store title, description, ID, timestamps, etc when the task is created and later updated. To meet this end, there is a feature known as the migrations in Laravel. These are in the form of files which can be used to update the database. Every time they are executed, the schema will alter in a manner that it becomes easy for the developers to update it.

Another reason why it is slowly capturing the PHP market is because it is easy to learn. The learning curve helps you to pick up the technicalities quickly and creating RESTful objects, web interfaces and MVC blocks are no trouble at all. In addition, it uses Composer, Eloquent (as the database abstraction model), Blade (templating standard), Artisan and automatic code generation tool. There are several developers who are unfamiliar with these tools. Thus, it might take a little bit of time to get accustomed to framework. However, once one gets the hang of things, building custom web applications become quite fast. Even a large one can be developed within a short span of time.

Laravel is hugely dependant on the various external packages for its functionality. Composer comes across the dependency manager here. You may as is why should this be important? Well, the composer makes it simple for the beginners to set up the project. There is no need to download zip files online or opt for cloning from github. All that a developer is required to do is click on the run and the entire copy of Laravel will be at your behest. On the other hand, the Artisan is a powerful tool. With this it expands and now the developers can use it to run various kinds of tasks. If you simply type ‘php artisan’ on your terminal window, it will open up multiple options.

There seems to be a perfect balance between usability and flexibility for creating anything that can be implemented online and yet save the long coding hours. However, saving time is not the only criterion that defines a good framework. What makes Laravel stand out is its performance. Of course, it feels all good when you do not have to spend huge hours building a web app. But once you are successful your app must be capable to handle all the hits it receives on being popular. In this regard it is important that your framework provides the necessary support. In fact, this is how a good and poor framework is judged. There are many who are reluctant to invest in testing tools. Under such circumstances, one can opt for finding the reports on a framework’s scalability and performance that are published on the web. You will find that Laravel has garnered good reviews for itself. In fact, it has emerged as a better option when compared to Zend or Yii. Generally frameworks perform faster when they are limited. But in this regard also Laravel scores better than Cake PHP and Zend.

It is due to these vast opportunities that Laravel is becoming a preferable choice for the developers. You can hire developers from PHP development company who can help you build web apps within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide PHP application development services. If you would like to hire PHP programmers for your web development needs, please contact us Mindfire Solutions.