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Web Application Development with Yii and PHP

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For PHP programmers with a yearning to add modernity and sophistication to their web applications, this book will be a revelation. A step-by-step tutorial to Yii, it talks you through the development of a complete real-world application. Overview In Detail This book is a step by step tutorial in developing a real-world application using the incremental and iterative approach to software development. You learn about agile software development by leaning on the agile nature of the Yii application development framework. You touch on each aspect of the software development lifecycle by building a project task management application from concept through production deployment. After a brief, general introduction to the Yii framework and outlining the software development approach taken throughout the book, the chapters break down in the same way as software development iterations do in real-world projects. After the 1st iteration, you will have a working and tested application with a valid, tested connection to a database. In the 2nd and 3rd iterations, we flesh out our main database entities and domain object model and become familiar with Yii's object-relational-mapping (ORM) layer, Active Record. We also learn how to lean on Yii's auto-generation tools to automatically build our create/read/update/delete (CRUD) functionality against our newly created model. These iterations also focus on how Yii's form validation and submission model works. By the end of the third iteration you will have a working application that allows you to mange projects and issues (tasks) within those projects. The 4th and 5th iterations are dedicated to user management. We learn about the built-in authentication model within Yii to assist in application login and logout functionality. We then dive into the authorization model, first taking advantage of a Yii's simple access control model, then implementing the more sophisticated role-based access control (RBAC) framework that Yii provides. What you will learn from this book

332 pages, Paperback

First published November 22, 2012

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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Profile Image for Stephan.
Author 1 book1 follower
August 11, 2016
Yii is probably one of the most underestimated PHP frameworks today. Unfortunately there are only few good books about it out there, and in my opinion this is the best introduction for beginners you can find. It is actually the second revision of the 2010 release "Agile Web Application Development with Yii 1.1 and PHP5".

When I read the first edition of the book I had a basic understanding of PHP and web apps with MySQL, but OOP and Yii were quite new to me. Fortunately the author found a good way to walk you through the various stages, from simple CRUD to User Access Control, adding external modules from the Zend framework to getting ready for production.

Now that I am much more familiar with Yii and OOP style I had the chance to read through Web Application Development with Yii and PHP and find it still very useful and also interesting for the more advanced readers. However, you should not expect this book to be a reference to Yii. Once you are up on your feet as a Yii developer you might be coming back once in a while to use the book as some kind of recipe book, but it can't replace Yii Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition. I suggest getting your feet back with this introduction and then move on to the Cookbook. This combination will cover most of your Yii needs. The rest can be discussed in the forums.

There are two things I liked about the first edition, which are lacking in this book: The emphasize on test driven development is only mentioned in the beginning and all subsequent steps leave the reader to work on their own unit tests. Some said the first edition concentrated too much on testing and too little on Yii, so this separation of concern might be a good thing for you. In my opinion it saved you reading another book just on testing.

Also, the chapter about making your app look good became even shorter in this second edition. There is no mention about localization anymore, which requires all international readers to look into this topic elsewhere. It does cover all important aspects, but as a beginner I wished it would be a little more verbose.

All in all I really recommend this book. The second edition offers a lot of improvements and is updated for the current state of Yii but also leaves out some smaller areas. You will still be fine without them and won't notice unless you own the first edition, but I wonder why they weren't kept.
Profile Image for Andrew.
1,021 reviews11 followers
January 31, 2013
Then I decided to try out the Yii framework (which is great by the way), I picked the first book (also the only one at the moment) I could find and got into it. With every chapter my motivation was getting bigger and I could not wait to finish this book so I could try everything I learned on my own project. This book gives a great introduction to Yii framework, MVC architecture in general, agile development and TDD (Test Driven Development). The book starts with some basic in general and then takes to step by step of developing a real world application. It's quite simple to follow and great for starting to get your hands dirty by learning a great PHP framework. Definitely suggest it to the people who are thinking about learning Yii framework, or for those who just started learning it and want to know what they can do with it and how. The people who know a little bit of Yii framework (like after reading a definitive guide) probably can skip this book and go straight for the Yii 1.1 Application Development Cookbook by Alexander Makarov
3 reviews
February 27, 2014
This book demonstrates all that there is to developing a web application using the PHP Yii Framework. Every concept is meticulously covered and explained in thorough detail. In reading this book one gets to learn today’s best web application development practices. You learn how to perform unit tests using PHPUnit Testing Framework as well as how to perform functional tests of your application using Selenium Remote Control Server.

This is a hands-on type of book. You get to build a project management application. In so doing you learn how to create user accounts, how to create page pagination, data sanitization, url routing, error handling, caching, language translations and how to create a role based access control feature for your application. Oh I almost forgot this one – you also get to observe how to customize the design of your application. After reading this book you will instantly become a master of the Yii Framework. There will be no project that you would not be able to execute.

I give this book a rating of 5/5. I have rarely given any book this rating. This book is well written. It’s an absolutely brilliant piece of work! I recommend it to every PHP programmer out there.
5 reviews2 followers
November 7, 2014
Yii is one of the best PHP frameworks used by a wide range of web developers around the world. "The Web Application Development with Yii and PHP" is one of the best resources available to get started with the framework. From downloading and installing the framework to developing and publishing a project, this book covers almost everything about Yii framework.
The author illustrates the features and functions with the help of "The TrackStar Application" - a project management application. It covers most of the common operations needed for developing a project such as the CRUD operations, User authentication and authorization, etc. and also explains about making the best use of the Yii framework such as using modules, predefined widgets and extensions.
Certainly the author and Packt have brought an excellent book for the web developers.
Profile Image for Allfarid Morales.
20 reviews
February 20, 2014
Los ejemplos del libro funcionan para el proyecto del libro, pero no para desarrollar otra cosa. La sintaxis es extremadamente confusa y los ejemplos no son didácticos. Hice bien en descargarlo pirata
Profile Image for Matthew.
45 reviews1 follower
February 10, 2013
A must buy if looking to learn the Yii framework. It gets more in depth than the online documentation. Great resource.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews

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