How is Yii Framework doing in PHP world? Any good or bad recent experiences.

Question

Personally I like the many features that it offers. I have seen some questions but they are old, so want to gather some response from people who used it or planning to use it. If you are planning to use, how did you arrive at this framework?

Answer 1

Personally, I'm tired of seeing so many new frameworks. The tendency for the PHP community to develop YAF is reaching the level of absurdity - how many are there now - over two dozen?

I understand that people may want the challenge of working on a framework project, or don't like what's currently available, so they embark to create a new one.

But you know what? I think it's time to stop creating new frameworks - and instead pick one of the well established frameworks and become a contributor.

Sorry, I know this really doesn't answer your question, but I'm unashamedly stealing space in your question to have a mini rant ;)

Answer 2

It all depends. What's the point of the project?

If it's to become more attractive to employers, figure out what teams in your area are using, and use that framework. Cake and Zend seem to be popular with small and big shops, respectively.

If it's to learn about PHP, you're much better off writing your own code from scratch. This forces you to really understand what you're doing at every turn. I'd suggest writing your code test-first.

If you just need to get some work done, use the tools you know best, if they're suitable for the problem at hand.

IMO, I'd use Yii if I were interested in trying yet another framework. After browsing the source for a minute or two, Yii seems to have pretty nice tests and test coverage, which both makes me trust the code more, and provides working examples of how to use the APIs.

Answer 3

Yii is interesting, but I recommend strongly, if it is something important you want to work on or it will cost you a lot of money, first READ SOME BOOKS about Rails (and Derivates like Groovy) and Django. These are setting the standards nowadays for what is possible and what a framework has to deliver today - many developers do not take the time, bit it will be a very good investment, to understand what problems and solutions already exist - there is a lot of wisdom in these things and you will have a much better base for deciding yourself.

ABout yii: from what I looked at it I learned that many features you would expect from a framework nowadays are not in yii. It looks more like a personal project and I think many poeple who are using it do not even know, that there are missing something...