2010

[Yii Seminar Report]

www.techalone.com
1/28/2010
 Yii Seminar Report

CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION
The Yii framework is free software. It is released under the terms of the following BSD
License.

1.1 New Features

This page summarizes the main new features introduced in each Yii release.

• Version 1.0.7

• Added support for displaying call stack information in trace messages

– Logging Context Information
• Added index option to AR relations so that related ob jects can be indexed
using the values of a specific column
– Relational Query Options

• Version 1.0.6

• Added support for using named scope with update and delete methods:
– Named Scopes
• Added support for using named scope in the with option of relational rules

• Added support for profiling SQL executions

– Profiling SQL Executions
• Added support for logging additional context information
– Logging Context Information
• Added support for customizing a single URL rule by setting its urlFormat
and case Sensitive options:
– User-friendly URLs
• Added support for using a controller action to display application errors:
– Handling Errors Using an Action

• Version 1.0.5

• Enhanced active record by supporting named scopes. See:

– Named Scopes
– Default Named Scope
– Relational Query with Named Scopes
• Enhanced active record by supporting lazy loading with dynamic query
options. See:
– Dynamic Relational Query Options
• Enhanced CUrlManager to support parameterizing the route part in URL
rules. See:
– Parameterizing Routes in URL Rules

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1.2 What is Yii

Yii is a high-performance component-based PHP framework for developing large-scale
Webapplications. It enables maximum reusability in Web programming and can significantly
accelerate the development process. The name Yii (pronounced as Yee or [ji:]) standsfor
easy, efficient and extensible.

Requirements
To run an Yii-powered Web application, you need a Web server supporting PHP 5.1.0
or higher.
For developers who want to use Yii, understanding ob ject-oriented programming
(OOP)is very helpful, because Yii is a pure OOP framework.

1.3 What is Yii Best for?

Yii is a generic Web programming framework that can be used for developing virtually
all sorts of Web applications. Because it is light-weighted and equipped with sophisticated
caching solutions, it is especially suitable for developing high-traffic applications, such as
portals, forums, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce systems, etc.

1.4 How is Yii Compared with Other Frameworks?

Like most PHP frameworks, Yii is an MVC framework. Yii excels over other PHP
frameworks in that it is efficient, feature-rich and clearly-documented. Yii is carefully
designed from the beginning to fit for serious Web application development. It is neither a
byproduct of some pro ject nor a conglomerate of third-partywork. It is the result of the
authors’ rich experience of Web application development and the investigation and reflection
of the most popular Web programming frameworks and applications.

1.4 Installation
Installation of Yii mainly involves the following two steps:
• Download Yii Framework from yiiframework.com.
• Unpack the Yii release file to a Web-accessible directory.

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Requirements
After installing Yii, you may want to verify that your server satisfies all the
requirementsof using Yii. You can do so by accessing the requirement checker script at the
followingURL in a Web browser:

http://hostname/path/to/yii/requirements/index.php

The minimum requirement by Yii is that your Web server supports PHP 5.1.0 or above.
Yii has been tested with Apache HTTP server on Windows and Linux operating systems.
It may also run on other Web servers and platforms provided PHP 5 is supported.

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CHAPTER 2: FUNDAMENTALS

2.1 Model-View-Controller (MVC)

Yii implements the model-view-controller (MVC) design pattern which is widely
adopted inWeb programming. MVC aims to separate business logic from user interface
considerationsso that developers can more easily change each part without affecting the
other. In MVC, the model represents the information (the data) and the business rules; the
view contains elements of the user interface such as text, form inputs; and the controller
manages the communication between the model and the view. Besides MVC, Yii also
introduces a front-controller, called application, which represents the execution context of
request processing. Application resolves the user request and dispatches it to an appropriate
controller for further handling.

The following diagram shows the static structure of an Yii application:

.

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A Typical Workflow
The following diagram shows a typical workflow of an Yii application when it is
handling a user request:

Figure 2.2: A typical workflow of Yii application

1. A user makes a request with the URL http://www.example.com/index.php?r=post/

show&id=1 and the Web server handles the request by executing the bootstrap script
index.php.

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2. The bootstrap script creates an application instance and runs it.

3. The application obtains the detailed user request information from an application
component named request.
4. The application determines the requested controller and action with the help of an
application component named urlManager. For this example, the controller is post
which refers to the PostController class; and the action is show whose actual meaning
is determined by the controller.
5. The application creates an instance of the requested controller to further handle the
user request. The controller determines that the action show refers to a method
named actionShow in the controller class. It then creates and executes filters (e.g.
access control, benchmarking) associated with this action. The action is executed if
it is allowed by the filters.
6. The action reads a Post model whose ID is 1 from the database.
7. The action renders a view named show with the Post model.
8. The view reads and displays the attributes of the Post model.
9. The view executes some widgets.
10. The view rendering result is embedded in a layout.
11. The action completes the view rendering and displays the result to the user.

2.2 Entry Script

Entry script is the bootstrap PHP script that handles user requests initially. It is the only
PHP script that end users can directly request to execute.In most cases, entry script of an Yii
application contains the code that is as simple as follows,

//remove the following line when in production mode

defined(’YII DEBUG’) or define(’YII DEBUG’,true);
//include Yii bootstrap file
require once(’path/to/yii/framework/yii.php’);
//create application instance and run
$configFile=’path/to/config/file.php’;

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Yii::createWebApplication($configFile)->run();

The script first includes the Yii framework bootstrap file yii.php. It then creates a Web
application instance with the specified configuration and runs it.

2.2.1 Debug Mode

An Yii application can run in either debug or production mode according to the
constantvalue YII DEBUG. By default, this constant value is defined as false, meaning
productionmode. To run in debug mode, define this constant as true before including the
yii.php file.Running application in debug mode is less efficient because it keeps many
internal logs.On the other hand, debug mode is also more helpful during development stage
because it
provides richer debugging information when error occurs.

2.3 Application
Application represents the execution context of request processing. Its main task is to
resolve the user request and dispatch it to an appropriate controller for further processing.
It also serves as the central place for keeping application-level configurations. For this
reason, application is also called front-controller.Application is created as a singleton by the
entry script. The application singleton can beaccessed at any place via Yii::app().

2.3.1 Application Configuration

By default, application is an instance of CWebApplication. To customize it, we
normally provide a configuration file (or array) to initialize its property values when the
application instance is being created. An alternative way of customizing application is to
extend CWebApplication. The configuration is an array of key-value pairs. Each key
represents the name of a property of the application instance, and each value the
corresponding property’s initial value. For example, the following configuration configures
the name and defaultController properties of the application.

array(
’name’=>’Yii Framework’,
’defaultController’=>’site’,

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We usually store the configuration in a separate PHP script (e.g. protected/config/main.

php). Inside the script, we return the configuration array as follows,return array(...);
To apply the configuration, we pass the configuration file name as a parameter to the
application’s constructor, or to Yii::createWebApplication() like the following, which is
usually done in the entry script:

$app=Yii::createWebApplication($configFile);

2.3.2 Application Base Directory

Application base directory refers to the root directory that contains all security-sensitive
PHP scripts and data. By default, it is a subdirectory named protected that is located under the
directory containing the entry script. It can be customized via setting the base Path property
in the. Contents under the application base directory should be protected from being accessed
by Web users. With Apache HTTP server, this can be done easily by placing a .htaccessfile
under the base directory. The content of the .htaccess file is as follows, deny from all.

2.3.3 Application Component

Functionalities of application can be easily customized and enriched with its flexible
component architecture. Application manages a set of application components, each imple-
menting specific features. For example, application resolves a user request with the help of
CUrlManager and CHttpRequest components.
By configuring the components property of application, we can customize the class and
property values of any application component used in an application. For example, we can
configure CMemCache component so that it can use multiple memcache servers for caching,

array(
......
’components’=>array(
......
’cache’=>array(
’class’=>’CMemCache’,

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’servers’=>array(
array(’host’=>’server1’, ’port’=>11211, ’weight’=>60),
array(’host’=>’server2’, ’port’=>11211, ’weight’=>40),
),
),
),
)

In the above, we add the cache element to the components array. The cache element
statesthat the class of the component is CMemCache and its servers property should be
initialized as such. To access an application component, use Yii::app()->ComponentID,
where ComponentID refers to the ID of the component (e.g. Yii::app()->cache).
An application component may be disabled by setting enabled to be false in its configu-
ration. Null is returned when we access a disabled component.

2.3.4 Core Application Components

Yii predefines a set of core application components to provide features common among
Web applications. For example, the request component is used to resolve user requests and
provide information such as URL, cookies. By configuring the properties of these core
components, we can change the default behaviors of Yii in nearly every aspect.

Below we list the core components that are pre-declared by CWebApplication.

• assetManager: CAssetManager - manages the publishing of private asset files.
• authManager: CAuthManager - manages role-based access control (RBAC).
• cache: CCache - provides data caching functionality. Note, you must specify the
actual class (e.g. CMemCache, CDbCache). Otherwise, null will be returned when
you access this component.
• clientScript: CClientScript - manages client scripts (javascripts and CSS).
• coreMessages: CPhpMessageSource - provides translated core messages used by Yii
framework.
• db: CDbConnection - provides the database connection. Note, you must configure
its connectionString property in order to use this component.
• errorHandler: CErrorHandler - handles uncaught PHP errors and exceptions.

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• messages: CPhpMessageSource - provides translated messaged used by Yii applica-

tion.
• request: CHttpRequest - provides information related with user requests.
• securityManager: CSecurityManager - provides security-related services, such as
hashing, encryption.
• session: CHttpSession - provides session-related functionalities.
• statePersister: CStatePersister - provides global state persistence method.
• urlManager: CUrlManager - provides URL parsing and creation functionality.
• user: CWebUser - represents the identity information of the current user.
• themeManager: CThemeManager - manages themes.

2.3.5 Application Lifecycles

When handling a user request, an application will undergo the following lifecycles:

1. Pre-initializes the application with CApplication::preinit();

2. Set up class autoloader and error handling;
3. Register core application components;
4. Load application configuration;
5. Initialize the application with CApplication::init()
• Register application behaviors;
• Load static application components;
6. Raise onBeginRequest event;
7. Process the user request:
• Resolve the user request;
• Create controller;
• Run controller;

2.4 Controller
A controller is an instance of CController or its child class. It is created by application
when the user requests for it. When a controller runs, it performs the requested action which
usually brings in the needed models and renders an appropriate view. An action, at its
simplest form, is just a controller class method whose name starts with action. A controller
has a default action. When the user request does not specify which action to execute, the

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default action will be executed. By default, the default action is named as index. It can be
changed by setting CController::defaultAction.
Below is the minimal code needed by a controller class. Since this controller does not
define any action, requesting for it would throw an exception.

class SiteController extends CController

{
}

2.4.1 Route
Controllers and actions are identified by IDs. Controller ID is in the format of path/
to/xyz which corresponds to the controller class file protected/controllers/path/to/
XyzController.php, where the token xyz should be replaced by actual names (e.g. post cor-
responds to protected/controllers/PostController.php). Action ID is the action method name
without the action prefix. For example, if a controller class contains a method named
actionEdit, the ID of the corresponding action would be edit.
Users request for a particular controller and action in terms of route. A route is formed
by concatenating a controller ID and an action ID separated by a slash. For example, the route
post/edit refers to PostController and its edit action. And by default, the URL

http://hostname/index.php?r=post/edit would request for this controller and action.

Since version 1.0.3, an application can contain modules. The route for a controller
action inside a module is in the format of moduleID/controllerID/actionID. For more details,
see the section about modules.

2.4.2 Controller Instantiation

A controller instance is created when CWebApplication handles an incoming request.
Given the ID of the controller, the application will use the following rules to determine what
the controller class is and where the class file is located.

• If CWebApplication::catchAllRequest is specified, a controller will be created based

on this property, and the user-specified controller ID will be ignored. This is mainly

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used to put the application under maintenance mode and display a static notice
page.
• If the ID is found in CWebApplication::controllerMap, the corresponding controller
configuration will be used to create the controller instance.
• If the ID is in the format of ’path/to/xyz’, the controller class name is assumed to
be XyzController and the corresponding class file is protected/controllers/path/
to/XyzController.php. For example, a controller ID admin/user would be resolved as
the controller class UserController and the class file protected/controllers/admin/
UserController.php. If the class file does not exist, a 404 CHttpException will be
raised.

In case when modules are used (available since version 1.0.3), the above process is
slightly different. In particular, the application will check if the ID refers to a controller
inside
a module, and if so, the module instance will be created first followed by the controller
instance.

2.4.3 Action
As aforementioned, an action can be defined as a method whose name starts with the
word action. A more advanced way is to define an action class and ask the controller to
instantiate it when requested. This allows actions to be reused and thus introduces more
reusability.

To define a new action class, do the following:

class UpdateAction extends CAction

{
public function run()
{
//place the action logic here
}
}
In order for the controller to be aware of this action, we override the actions() method

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of
our controller class:
class PostController extends CController
{
public function actions()
{
return array(
’edit’=>’application.controllers.post.UpdateAction’,
);
}
}
In the above, we use the path alias application.controllers.post.UpdateAction to specify
that the action class file is protected/controllers/post/UpdateAction.php. Writing class-based
actions, we can organize an application in a modular fashion. For example, the following
directory structure may be used to organize the code for controllers:

protected/
controllers/
PostController.php
UserController.php
post/
CreateAction.php
ReadAction.php
UpdateAction.php
user/
CreateAction.php
ListAction.php
ProfileAction.php
UpdateAction.php

2.4.4 Filter
Filter is a piece of code that is configured to be executed before and/or after a controller
action executes. For example, an access control filter may be executed to ensure that the user

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is authenticated before executing the requested action; a performance filter may be used to
measure the time spent in the action execution.

An action can have multiple filters. The filters are executed in the order that they appear
in the filter list. A filter can prevent the execution of the action and the rest of the unexecuted
filters.
A filter can be defined as a controller class method. The method name must begin with
filter. For example, the existence of the filterAccessControl method defines a filter named
accessControl. The filter method must be of the signature:

public function filterAccessControl($filterChain)

{
//call $filterChain->run() to continue filtering and action execution
}
where $filterChain is an instance of CFilterChain which represents the filter list
associated
with the requested action. Inside the filter method, we can call $filterChain->run() to
continue filtering and action execution.
A filter can also be an instance of CFilter or its child class. The following code defines a
new filter class:
class PerformanceFilter extends CFilter
{
protected function preFilter($filterChain)
{
//logic being applied before the action is executed
return true; // false if the action should not be executed
}
protected function postFilter($filterChain)
{
//logic being applied after the action is executed
}
}

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To apply filters to actions, we need to override the CController::filters() method. The

method should return an array of filter configurations. For example, class PostController
extends CController
{
......
public function filters()
{
return array(
’postOnly + edit, create’,

array(
’application.filters.PerformanceFilter - edit, create’,
’unit’=>’second’,
),
);
}
}

The above code specifies two filters: postOnly and PerformanceFilter. The postOnly fil-
ter is method-based (the corresponding filter method is defined in CController already); while
the PerformanceFilter filter is ob ject-based. The path alias application.filters.
PerformanceFilter specifies that the filter class file is protected/filters/PerformanceFilter.
We use an array to configure PerformanceFilter so that it may be used to initialize the
property values of the filter ob ject. Here the unit property of PerformanceFilter will be
initialized as ’second’.
Using the plus and the minus operators, we can specify which actions the filter should
and should not be applied to. In the above, the postOnly should be applied to the edit and
create actions, while PerformanceFilter should be applied to all actions EXCEPT edit and
create. If neither plus nor minus appears in the filter configuration, the filter will be applied to
all actions.

Model
A model is an instance of CModel or its child class. Models are used to keep data and

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their relevant business rules. A model represents a single data ob ject. It could be a row in a
database table or a form of user inputs. Each field of the data ob ject is represented as an
attribute of the model.
The attribute has a label and can be validated against a set of rules. Yii implements two
kinds of models: form model and active record. They both extend from the same base class
CModel.
A form model is an instance of CFormModel. Form model is used to keep data
collected from user inputs. Such data are often collected, used and then discarded. For
example, on a login page, we can use a form model to represent the username and password
information that are provided by an end user. For more details, please refer to Working with
Form Active Record (AR) is a design pattern used to abstract database access in an ob ject-
oriented fashion. Each AR ob ject is an instance of CActiveRecord or its child class,
representing a single row in a database table. The fields in the row are represented as
properties of the AR ob ject. Details about AR can be found in Active Record.

View
A view is a PHP script consisting of mainly elements of user interface. It can contain
PHP statements, but it is recommended that these statements should not alter data models and
should remain relatively simple. For the spirit of separation of logic and presentation, large
chunk of logic should be placed in controller or model instead of view.
A view has a name which is used to identify the view script file when rendering. The
name of a view is the same as the name of its view script file. For example, view edit refers to
a view script file named as edit.php. To render a view, call CController::render() with the
name of the view. The method will look for the corresponding view file under the directory
protected/views/ControllerID.
Inside the view script, we can access the controller instance using $this. We can thus
pull in any property of the controller by evaluating $this->propertyName in the view. We can
also use the following push approach to pass data to the view:

$this->render(’edit’, array(
’var1’=>$value1,
’var2’=>$value2,
));

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In the above, the render() method will extract the second array parameter into variables.
As a result, in the view script we can access local variables $var1 and $var2.
Layout
Layout is a special view that is used to decorate views. It usually contains portions of
user interface that are common among several views. For example, a layout may contain
header and footer portions and embed the content view in between,

......header here......
<?php echo $content; ?>
......footer here......

where $content stores the rendering result of the content view.

Layout is implicitly applied when calling render(). By default, the view script protected/
views/layouts/main.php is used as the layout. This can be customized by changing either
CWebApplication::layout or CController::layout. To render a view without applying any
layout, call renderPartial() instead.

Widget
A widget is an instance of CWidget or its child class. It is a component mainly for
presentational purpose. Widgets are usually embedded in a view script to generate some
complex yet self-contained user interface. For example, a calendar widget can be used to
render a complex calendar user interface. Widgets enable better reusability in user interface.

To use a widget, do as follows in a view script:

<?php $this->beginWidget(’path.to.WidgetClass’); ?>

...body content that may be captured by the widget...
<?php $this->endWidget(); ?>
or
<?php $this->widget(’path.to.WidgetClass’); ?>

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The latter is used when the widget does not need any body content.

Widgets can be configured to customize its behaviors. This is done by settings their
initial property values when calling CBaseController::beginWidget or
CBaseController::widget. For example, when using CMaskedTextField widget, we would
like to specify the mask being used. We can do so by passing an array of those property
initial values as follows, where the array keys are property names and array values the initial
values of the corresponding widget properties:
<?php
$this->widget(’CMaskedTextField’,array(
’mask’=>’99/99/9999’
));
?>
To define a new widget, extend CWidget and override its init() and run() methods:
class MyWidget extends CWidget
{
public function init()
{
//this method is called by CController::beginWidget()
}

public function run()

{
//this method is called by CController::endWidget()
}
}

Like a controller, a widget can also have its own view. By default, widget view files are
located under the views subdirectory of the directory containing the widget class file. These
views can be rendered by calling CWidget::render(), similar to that in controller. The only
difference is that no layout will be applied to a widget view.

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System View
System views refer to the views used by Yii to display error and logging information.
For example, when a user requests for a non-existing controller or action, Yii will throw an
exception explaining the error. Yii displays the exception using a specific system view.
The naming of system views follows some rules. Names like errorXXX refer to views for
displaying CHttpException with error code XXX. For example, if CHttpException is raised
with error code 404, the error404 view will be displayed.
Yii provides a set of default system views located under framework/views. They can be
customized by creating the same-named view files under protected/views/system.

Component
Yii applications are built upon components which are ob jects written to a specification.
A component is an instance of CComponent or its derived class. Using a component mainly
involves accessing its properties and raising/handling its events. The base class CComponent
specifies how to define properties and events.

Component Property
A component property is like an ob ject’s public member variable. We can read its
value or assign a value to it. For example,

$width=$component->textWidth; // get the textWidth property

$component->enableCaching=true; // set the enableCaching property

To define a component property, we can simply declare a public member variable in the
component class. A more flexible way, however, is by defining getter and setter methods
like the following:

public function getTextWidth()

{
return $this-> textWidth;
}
public function setTextWidth($value)
{

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$this-> textWidth=$value;
}

The above code defines a writable property named textWidth (the name is case-
insensitive). When reading the property, getTextWidth() is invoked and its returned value
becomes the property value; Similarly, when writing the property, setTextWidth() is invoked.
If the setter method is not defined, the property would be read-only and writing it would
throw an exception. Using getter and setter methods to define a property has the benefit that
additional logic (e.g. performing validation, raising events) can be executed when reading
and writing the property.

Component Event
Component events are special properties that take methods (called event handlers) as
their values. Attaching (assigning) a method to an event will cause the method to be invoked
automatically at the places where the event is raised. Therefore, the behavior of a component
can be modified in a way that may not be foreseen during the development of the component.

A component event is defined by defining a method whose name starts with on. Like
property names defined via getter/setter methods, event names are case-insensitive. The
following code defines an onClicked event:

public function onClicked($event)

{
$this->raiseEvent(’onClicked’, $event);
}

where $event is an instance of CEvent or its child class representing the event parameter.
We can attach a method to this event as follows:

$component->onClicked=$callback;

where $callback refers to a valid PHP callback. It can be a global function or a class
method. If the latter, the callback must be given as an array: array($object,’methodName’).

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The signature of an event handler must be as follows:

function methodName($event)
{
......
}

where $event is the parameter describing the event (it originates from the raiseEvent()
call). The $event parameter is an instance of CEvent or its derived class. At the minimum,
it contains the information about who raises the event.
If we call onClicked() now, the onClicked event will be raised (inside onClicked()), and
the attached event handler will be invoked automatically. An event can be attached with
multiple handlers. When the event is raised, the handlers will be invoked in the order that
they are attached to the event. If a handler decides to prevent the rest handlers from being
invoked, it can set $event-¿handled to be true.

Component Behavior
Starting from version 1.0.2, a component has added support for mixin and can be
attached with one or several behaviors. A behavior is an ob ject whose methods can be
’inherited’ by its attached component through the means of collecting functionality instead of
specialization (i.e., normal class inheritance). A component can be attached with several
behaviors and thus achieve ’multiple inheritance’.

Behavior classes must implement the IBehavior interface. Most behaviors can extend
from the CBehavior base class. If a behavior needs to be attached to a model, it may also
extend from CModelBehavior or CActiveRecordBehavior which implements additional
features specifc for models.
To use a behavior, it must be attached to a component first by calling the behavior’s
attach() method. Then we can call a behavior method via the component:

//$name uniquely identifies the behavior in the component

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$behavior->attach($name,$component);
//test() is a method of $behavior
$component->test();

An attached behavior can be accessed like a normal property of the component. For
example, if a behavior named tree is attached to a component, we can obtain the reference
to this behavior ob ject using:

$behavior=$component->tree;
//equivalent to the following:
//$behavior=$component->asa(’tree’);
A behavior can be temporarily disabled so that its methods are not available via the
component. For example,
$component->disableBehavior($name);
//the following statement will throw an exception
$component->test();
$component->enableBehavior($name);
//it works now
$component->test();

It is possible that two behaviors attached to the same component have methods of the
same name. In this case, the method of the first attached behavior will take precedence.
When used together with , behaviors are even more powerful. A behavior, when being
attached to a component, can attach some of its methods to some events of the component.
By doing so, the behavior gets a chance to observe or change the normal execution flow
of the component.

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CHAPTER 3: Creating First Yii Application

To get an initial experience with Yii, we describe in this section how to create our first
Yii application. We will use the powerful yiic tool which can be used to automate code
creation for certain tasks. For convenience, we assume that YiiRoot is the directory where
Yii is installed, and WebRoot is the document root of our Web server.

Run yiic on the command line as follows:

% YiiRoot/framework/yiic webapp WebRoot/testdrive

Note: When running yiic on Mac OS, Linux or Unix, you may need to change the
permission of the yiic file so that it is executable. Alternatively, you may run the
tool as follows,
% cd WebRoot/testdrive
% php YiiRoot/framework/yiic.php webapp WebRoot/testdrive

This will create a skeleton Yii application under the directory WebRoot/testdrive. The
application has a directory structure that is is needed by most Yii applications. Without
writing a single line of code, we can test drive our first Yii application by accessing the
following URL in a Web browser:

http://hostname/testdrive/index.php

As we can see, the application has three pages: the homepage, the contact page and
the login page. The homepage shows some information about the application as well as

the user login status, the contact page displays a contact form that users can fill in to submit
their inquiries, and the login page allows users to be authenticated before accessing
privileged contents.

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• testdrive/

• index.php Web application entry script file

• assets/ containing published resource files

• css/ containing CSS files

• images/ containing image files

• themes/ containing application themes

• protected/ containing protected application files

• yiic yiic command line script

• yiic.bat yiic command line script for Windows

• commands/ containing customized ’yiic’ commands

• shell/ containing customized ’yiic shell’ commands

• components/ containing reusable user components

• MainMenu.php the ’MainMenu’ widget class

• Identity.php the ’Identity’ class used for authentication

• views/ containing view files for widgets

• mainMenu.php the view file for ’MainMenu’ widget

• config/ containing configuration files

• console.php the console application configuration

• main.php the Web application configuration

• controllers/ containing controller class files

• SiteController.php the default controller class

• extensions/ containing third-party extensions

• messages/ containing translated messages

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• models/ containing model class files

• LoginForm.php the form model for ’login’ action

• ContactForm.php the form model for ’contact’ action

• runtime/ containing temporarily generated files

• views/ containing controller view and layout files

• layouts/ containing layout view files

• main.php the default layout for all views

• site/ containing view files for the ’site’ controller

• contact.php the view for ’contact’ action

• index.php the view for ’index’ action

• login.php the view for ’login’ action

• system/ containing system view files

Connecting to Database
Most Web applications are backed by databases. Our test-drive application is not an
exception. To use a database, we first need to tell the application how to connect to it. This is
done by changing the application configuration file WebRoot/testdrive/protected/
config/main.php

Creating First Yii Application

......
’components’=>array(
......
’db’=>array(
’connectionString’=>’sqlite:protected/data/source.db’,
),
),
......
);

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In the above, we add a db entry to components, which instructs the application to

connect to the SQLite database WebRoot/testdrive/protected/data/source.db when needed.

Note: To use Yii’s database feature, we need to enable PHP PDO extension and
the driver-specific PDO extension. For the test-drive application, we would need
the php pdo and php pdo sqlite extensions to be turned on.

To this end, we need to prepare a SQLite database so that the above configuration can
be effective. Using some SQLite admin tool, we can create a database with the following
schema:

CREATE TABLE User (

id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
username VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,
password VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(128) NOT NULL
);

Note: If you are using MySQL database, you should replace AUTOINCREMENT with
AUTO INCREMENT in the above SQL.

For simplicity, we only create a single User table in our database. The SQLite database
file is saved as WebRoot/testdrive/protected/data/source.db. Note that both the file and
the containing directory must be made writable by the Web server process, as required by
SQLite.

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Implementing CRUD Operations

Now is the fun part. We would like to implement the CRUD (create, read, update and
delete) operations for the User table we just created. This is also commonly needed in
practical applications.

Instead of taking trouble to write actual code, we would use the powerful yiic tool again
to automatically generate the code for us. This process is also known as scaffolding. Open
a command line window, and execute the commands listed as follows,

% cd WebRoot/testdrive
% protected/yiic shell
Yii Interactive Tool v1.0
Please type ’help’ for help. Type ’exit’ to quit.
>> model User

generate User.php

The ’User’ class has been successfully created in the following file:

D:\wwwroot\testdrive\protected\models\User.php

If you have a ’db’ database connection, you can test it now with:

$model=User::model()->find();
print_r($model);
>> crud User
generate UserController.php
generate create.php
mkdir D:/wwwroot/testdrive/protected/views/user
generate update.php
generate list.php

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generate show.php
Crud ’user’ has been successfully created. You may access it via:

http://hostname/path/to/index.php?r=user

In the above, we use the yiic shell command to interact with our skeleton application.
At the prompt, we execute two sub-commands: model User and crud User. The former
generates a model class for the User table, while the latter reads the User model and
generates the code implementing the CRUD operations.

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CONCLUSION

Yii does not need to be installed under a Web-accessible directory. An Yii

application has one entry script which is usually the only file that needs to be
exposed to Web users. Other PHP scripts, including those from Yii, should be
protected from Web access since they may be exploited for hacking.

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REFERENCES

[1] www.code.google.com/yii/
[2] Wikipedia - Yii

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