specializing in digital media technologies

I have three decent-size Web sites to do in 2009, so I thought I might try using a PHP framework for the first time, instead of coding everything from scratch. I’ve used Ruby on Rails for Web development before, so I’m comfortable with frameworks and the MVC architecture, but I wanted to educate myself on PHP frameworks. After researching a handful of frameworks, and after an unsatisfying attempt to use Zend Framework, I finally settled on, and really came to appreciate the Yii Framework. The Yii Framework is still quite new, and the documentation isn’t expansive, but it works so well that it’s still quite easy to use. In this first of several posts on the Yii Framework, I just discuss setting up and testing Yii.The first thing you need to use the Yii Framework is have PHP and a Web server installed, of course. (Well, that used to be true. As of June 9th, you can now try Yii using a virtual appliance. From Yii’s Web site, you can download a pre-built server: Linux OS, PHP, Web server, and PostgreSQL database. The appliance runs using VMware’s Server utility, which is free.) But if you’re reading this, I’m going to assume you have access to a PHP-enabled server. Note that the Yii Framework does require PHP 5.1 or above. Fortunately, the framework will test your setup for you! Start by downloading the latest stable version of the Yii Framework. At the time of this writing, that’s 1.0.6. The file you download will be named something like yii-version.release.ext and is only around 2MB. Expand this to create a folder of stuff:

• CHANGELOG, LICENSE, README, and UPGRADE text documents
• demos folder
• framework folder
• requirements folder

You should read the README and LICENSE docs, of course, but the folders are most important here. The demos folder contains four Web applications written using Yii. They’re great for seeing working code as you’re trying to write your own. The framework folder is what’s required by any Web site using Yii. The requirements folder is something simple and brilliant…

I also assume that you already know what the Web root directory is on your computer or server: this is the folder where your URL points to. In other words, when you go to http://localhost or http://www.example.com in your Web browser, it grabs documents out of the Web root folder. Going with Yii’s conventions, I’ll call this WebRoot. Create a new folder in WebRoot called yii, and copy the framework and requirements folders there. Then go to yourURL/yii/requirements in your Web browser (for example, http://localhost/yii/requirements). You should see a report as to whether or not your setup meets the minimum requirements.

Assuming your setup passed all the requirements, you’re good to go on. Note that you don’t necessarily need every extension: you just really need the Yii Framework requirements, PDO, and the PDO extension for the database you’ll be using. (If you’re not familiar with it, PDO is a database abstraction layer, making your Web sites database-agnostic.)

In my next post, I’ll show you how to use the command-line Yii tools to create your first Web application. It’s pretty sweet stuff and is the closest thing to Ruby on Rails that I’ve seen (which I consider to be a very good thing). Subsequent posts will explain MVC and highlight specific tips and tricks I discovered while developing my Yii-based sites. EDIT: Here’s the next in the series on Yii. Here’s the start of the series on MVC.