Yii is a generic Web programming, it can be used to develop all kinds of web applications using PHP. It is based on DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) coding concept so it provides you with a pretty clean and logical code base.Yii has 2 versions: 1.1 & 2.0. Latest version is 2.0 adopting the latest technologies and 1.1 is now in maintenance mode. You need a php version 5.4.0 or greater & knowledge of object-oriented programming (OOP) for rapid development using Yii2.

Here I explore reasons to use the Yii framework.

1) Faster in comparison with other frameworks

Yii is faster due to its “Lazy loading” technique. For example it will not include a class file until class is used for the first time and it will not create an object until the object is accessed for the first time. Other frameworks enable functionality without considering its use in a request.

2) Fast development using GII module (Very Efficient CRUD Management)

Gii is a magical tool that can write code for you. You just need to set up Gii in your application , then you can easily use its features . CRUD generator is the most popular feature through which you can create CRUD functionality for specified database tables and controllers, models and views will be generated for you if you follow the steps properly. It will also provide form validations according to your datatype. It’ Cool!! Isn’t it?

3) Form and input validations

Form creation in yii2 is easy and saves time as it provides ActiveForm widget and Html helper classes and it’s really fast to develop. Validations are always a time consuming process for developers but Yii has simplified it for you ; just add your input field rules in model and it will automatically create ajax validations for you and it will be implemented in the form.

4) Powerful support for database programming

There are three different ways to work with databases in Yii. All the methods provide secure use of databases and prevent SQL injection.

• Database Access Objects

DAO is built on top of PDO (PHP data objects) and it provides an object oriented way for accessing the database. It enables access to different database management systems (DBMS) in a single interface. It prevents SQL injection and you mainly need to deal with plain SQLs and PHP arrays.

• Query Builder

QueryBuilder allows you to construct an SQL query in a programmatic way for building SQL queries. It helps you to generate more secured SQL statements and is more readable.

• Active Record

ActiveRecord is an Object-relational mapping (ORM) approach and is an object oriented interface for accessing and manipulating data. In this approach an Active record class is associated with a table in the database and it’s instance corresponds to a row of a particular table.

5) Secure and Fast authentication and authorization

Yii provides an authentication module ready. You just need to pass a user model and you can get all required features like session and cookies for us ready on the fly.

Authorization includes Access control Filter and Role based access control (RBAC) . Access control filter is used in a controller or module like a filter to allow only requests after it checks that it is allowed. RBAC on the other hand uses authorization based on user roles and permission is defined for all user types and can only access data from specified rules.

6) Widgets and Helpers – Reusable building blocks

Widgets are reusable building blocks used to create complex user interface elements in object oriented fashion . Yii provides default widgets like Gridview, Listview etc through which you can render data with all the functionalities like searching, sorting, pagination ready for you. Just pass the model to the widget and it’s all rendered beautifully. You can also use a widget developed by other programmers by including in your project.

Helpers are also reusable classes which we can use in manipulation of data , HTML generation etc and make the code object oriented and more readable.

7) Security

Yii has some great features and it comes with a security component that uses several methods to provide a secure application. It uses a generatePasswordHash method for creating a hash password of users and a validatePassword method for checking input password with hash password. It also automatically checks the valid CSRF token and generates a token when you use ActiveForm in Yii. It uses CHtmlPurifier to avoid Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attacks. It also blocks cookies from being modified and thus prevents cookie attacks.

8) Modular Programming

Yii provides a flexible way of dividing applications into different modules, and you can create as many modules for your application based on your requirement. For example Admin panel is one module named as ‘Backend’ which contains controllers and view for admin side and another module is for Client side named as ‘Frontend’ which is client side Module and contains controllers views widgets for same. The common code for both module example Models can be specified commonly which you can use in both modules.

9) Assets

Asset is a CSS/Javascript or a video/audio file or a collection of this which you can reference in a web page. Yii manages assets in a bundle called Asset Bundle which you can register in a view. Asset caching is also provided by default; so each time the asset bundle is not loaded on request which reduces the response time. Another great example is when you use a widget ; it’s CSS and Js files are loaded automatically by the asset handler.

10) Good Documentation

Last but not the least, Yii provides a great documentation and every feature is explained starting from introduction, installation and complex topics with examples. Yii community is large so you can get quick solutions to your questions over the web.

Conclusion

To conclude, I can say that if you are in search of a framework which provides faster development with ease and security then Yii is the right choice. More, it depends upon your functionality and system you are running on.