Gone are the days when PHP developers had to write code for a web application for scratch. Thanks to various PHP frameworks for making lives of programmers so easy. Frameworks provide a structure or a base to create a web application and save time that you’d usually spend on writing repetitive codes.
Yii is one of the most popular PHP frameworks among web application developers in India. And despite the growing competition, Yii has held its fort strong. In total, there are three versions of Yii, the first one Yii 1.0 being released on December 3, 2008. The other two – Yii 1.1 and Yii 2.0 are still active. Yii 1.1 was released on January 10, 2010, while the latest model made its debut on October 12, 2014.
It doesn’t matter which version you choose because all three will help you develop a web application that is of the best quality. Many Yii web app development companies in India use all three versions of Yii Framework.
India ranks 13th for using Yii framework for developing content management web applications with around 164,808 web applications until now. The United States ranks the list at 13,360,575 web applications, followed by Germany at 1,336,220, the United Kingdom at 814,285, and Russia at 700,594 web applications. Canada stood sixth with 322,788 web applications made using Yii framework.
Let’s take a look at the best practices from top programmers from around the world:
1. Follow Yii Code standards
Like every frame, Yii too uses a coding standard called PSR-2 coding standards to stop projects from becoming an irreparable mess. Here are some recommendations by the PSR-2 coding standards:
- Mention a newline at the end of every file
- All files should either use <?= tags or <?php
- Files should only UTF-8 without BOM for PHP code
- Declare method names in camelCase
- Declare property names in camelCase
- Use elseif instead of else if
2. Update the Yii package
When an update is announced, install it on your Yii package. Run the composer require command and mention your package version number. In case you want to update Yii version 2.0.10, use the command – 1 composer require “yiisoft/yii2:~2.0.10” –update-with-dependencies.
The update will fail if you don’t mention the switch or Yii will choose to download a dependency that is already installed in your package.
You can also update using the composer.json file, run composer update, and choose what needs to be updated. This is the command that you’ll need to give – 1 composer update yiisoft/yii2 yiisoft/yii2-composer bower-asset/jquery.inputmask.
This command will only update the sections that aren’t and leave the updated ones out of the process. It is a foolproof method and doesn’t cause any dependency-related problems.
3. Avoid overheads
Overhead work is quite tedious. Rather than adding it to the main file, you can do it in a separate PHP script and then add to it. Something as simple as resizing an image or changing the color of the text in one small part can be done using another script.
4. Use Active Records
Active Records is very functional and the level of database abstraction is similar to that of Query Builder and SQL. You can also use it to add and edit records simply by adding a validation layer.
5. Rigorous testing
You might be an expert PHP developer who provides the best Yii framework development services in India but mistakes happen. This makes application testing an essential part of the process. If there’s something wrong in the code and you don’t find, all your efforts will become senseless. You can download tools like Blackfire.io and Tideways to monitor and profile performance of the web application you are working. These tools are instrumental since they pick up an error as and when you progress rather than you going through the code after you are done writing it.
Kanhasoft is a leading Yii PHP application development company in India that provides excellent web application solution. Our team of expert developers are skilled in working with every version of Yii framework.
