Wednesday, 4 November 2015

What are the pros and cons of using Yii Framework?

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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.

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