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.

What's the best MVC framework for PHP?

“The 21st century has received a magical touch from the web industry. Every sector and every enterprise are now taking the assistance from web applications to enhance their business possibilities and productivity. As a result, many web domain specific technologies were born in this era starting from JSP, ASP, PHP, ROR and Python, etc. To make the web development process quicker and accurate in order to meet the expectations and high demands of the industry, many web frameworks have been developed for different web domain specific languages. These frameworks are equipped with highly optimized and well-organized libraries, modules, and packages to help the web developers in designing enterprise standard high performance web solutions. Most of the 21^st century frameworks follow MVC architecture, i.e. Model-View-Controller scheme. With MVC, the View component (user interface) remains isolated from the core logic section of the application making the development process much professional and well-organized than before. Fortunately, MVC architecture received overnight popularity from the industry and has been well accepted by both the developers and the tech experts. As a result, the industry is now flooded with many MVC web frameworks. Among those, PHP web frameworks have been a boon for the industry. This is mainly because; they are usually open source and hence enable web developers to create low cost web applications on the fly. Let’s check ‘what are the top PHP MVC web frameworks of the industry’ and then we will try to find out which one is the best?”

CakePHP- the power of OOP and ORM: It has been a continuous concern for PHP developers to implement Object Oriented approach to their application; now it is utterly possible with CakePHP. Besides other features that are common with many web frameworks, CakePHP comes with inbuilt support for ORM i.e. Object Relational Mapper. Here, the PHP developer is given adequate room to play around the database. In fact, the database tables are transformed into Objects; and different operations over the table are performed by different functions. This is very easy to digest for any web developer. Moreover, it is well equipped with CRUD scaffolding i.e. database operations like Create, Read, Update and Delete are performed in such a hassle free manner that the PHP developers need not think much about the background database queries for any modification of the database. Everything is done in a smoother manner by the framework without giving any pain to the developer. As a result, the web developer can focus more over the core logic and innovative ideas instead of running behind the database stuffs. As the database is under the control of CakePHP, any change in the application will automate the overall changes of the application without having to modify the code at every place. This establishes the power of the Object Oriented approach of CakePHP.

Zend for high performance web app development: Zend is one of the oldest frameworks of PHP and still it has remained as the first choice for many PHP developers. Zend was one of the first PHP 5 compliant frameworks for web developers, enabling them to develop contemporary web applications at a faster rate. Now, the latest Zend framework has made it PHP 7 compliant and that means more power and more efficiency than before. It has inbuilt debugging tools, i.e. xDebug and ZendDebugger to debug your source code. It makes the code not only error proof but also well maintainable. It has Zend server and when it combines with the core framework, the performance becomes outstanding, the efficiency touches every limit and the user experience improves a lot. Capability to integrate Emulators has made it future ready and to design modern web apps for different smart operating systems like Android, iOS or Windows and of course in a responsive manner. It enables the developer to have some inbuilt testing methods to be carried out over the application in a magical manner like unit testing with PHPUnit and Integrated PHPDocumentor 2.

Laravel for large scale development: It is yet another renowned PHP MVC framework having a tremendous market share gained in a very less span of time! It is best suited for large scale web solutions. Though it got launched in 2011 but by 2015, it surged out as the best PHP framework of the industry. Being a MVC framework, it enables the web developers in creating awesome web apps in a flawless manner. It is also known as FullStack because of its unmatched quality of resource handling. It has many unique features like HTML generation, optimized web serving, user authentication, etc. The list does not end! Features like automatic pagination, blade template engine, eloquent ORM, expressive syntax and reverse routing are there to boost the confidence of any PHP web developer. Modularity, flexibility and highly customizable offerings of this framework have made it possible to rule the web industry with dignity.

Symfony 2- better for speed carving websites: Symfony 2 is yet another PHP MVC framework that was gifted to the PHP developer in 2005. When it was introduced to the industry it had a clear vision to provide utmost benefit to the PHP developers in creating highly optimized and scalable web applications. Over time, it got reinvented and refined to make the framework even more useful than before. Now in 2015 it has come up as the most popular PHP framework for high speed web application development. It has a unique approach to handle multiple resources at once without compromising on the efficiency of the application. Like any other MVC framework, it also enables the PHP developer to keep logic section of the application isolated from the View section. But here, the database is handled in an optimized manner so that the end user will get the best user experience for any type of interactive communication between the user and the server. It is highly popular in creating event driven web applications that need excess power and speed for the process and Symfony 2 framework provides the same in a tranquil manner.

Yii - small yet powerful: Yii is considered as one of the smallest PHP frameworks of the industry; but it enables the web developer in creating attractive and beautiful web applications in a short span of time. It has many templates that help in creating quick web solutions without compromising on the look and feel and user experience of the application. Though, it is micro in size, but it is highly efficient and useful in crafting quick web applications preferably for small scale web solutions.

From above discussion, we find that every framework has a specific use and if they can be efficiently used by any PHP developer, the end product will be simply outstanding! So, all are best in their fields and specific circumstances and it would be biased to declare any one as the best. After all, it depends upon the project requirements and personal choice. If you want to harness the benefits of PHP then 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.