Where to learn Yii?

Question

I have been trying to learn Yii without luck. I find Zend Framework, Kohana, Code Igniter among other frameworks much easier to learn than Yii. The documentation also su**s. Can you post links to easy-to-understand and well written tutorials/articles? The official documentation is filled with grammar errors and seems to be rushed...

Solution 1

I've started here http://blog.dmcinsights.com/series/learning-the-yii-framework/

Then I did the online blog tutorial

A very good place to search/ask for info is the forum. The community is nice and will always answer you very fast.

Yes, the blog tutorial is filled with typos and errors of some sort. But IMHO, this is were you develop more skills. You have to actually search. Or if you're lazy, the comments after the tutorial tell you what to do. But usually, after the half of the tutorial, you'll begin to understand why it is not working and how to solve it. This is, from my point of view, the best way to learn.

Don't give up, Yii is very nice and powerful. Yii is the faster fully-loaded framework after symfony 2.

Solution 2

Try this link:

http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6129-total-fresher-in-php-frameworks-and-yii-i-dont-understand-tutorials/

It's my thread and in the first post there is attached PDF. On Xmas 2009 I was beginning with Yii. I had never user PHP framework before so I was lost in terms like Controller, using views, integrated ajax etc.. So (when I understood it) I created a small manual that could help beginners. Have a look at it and let me know if it was helpful. It's not finished yet, it wants to reformulate something, but main concept of YII and MVC architecture is described..

Solution 3

Also, don't forget the "Definitive Guide to Yii". I found that after I started developing my app (basing all of the code on the blog tutorial), most of the things I got stuck on were further explained in the Guide.

Also, don't forget to contribute your questions/suggestions to the community - it will only become more robust with more people banging away at it...

http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/

an ongoing, and up-to-date wiki article on this subject can be found here: http://www.yiiframework.com/wiki/268/how-to-learn-yii

Solution 4

Yes, I would add that both the definitive guide and the api manual can be downloaded in pdf and chm (recommended) format.

Solution 5

As mentioned above, reading through the "Definitive Guide to Yii" is the best place to start as it covers all of Yii's main (and numerous) features. The "Blog Tutorial" is helpful too.

Yii also has a nice set of easily searchable and cross-referenced Class Reference (API) Docs here: http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/api/

The Yii forum is very active too, with the developer himself (qiang) answering lots of questions. Yii is very actively developed so when you report bugs in Google Code you often get fast responses there as well.

Finally, included in the Yii source when you check it out of SVN is a "demos" folder which has a working Blog demo, a Hello World, and a few other demo apps.

View more solutions

Comments

[bdutta74]

Would recommend folks to read the reviews of this & the other Yii book on Amazon before buying. I have both books, bought in a frenzy without doing the Amazon review due-diligence, and I regret. Well, not that the books are bad, just that very large no. of people didn't find it as helpful as they hoped. Larry Ullman mentioned that he might be writing a book on Yii. I'd definitely put my money on that book, when it is out. He is a gem of a teacher.

[Adib Aroui]

what do you mean by after symfony 2? do you mean symphony 2 is faster than Yii?

[Zabs]

bit old now but the YiiBook is well written, I admit the Yii documentation on the official site is really bad and poorly structured & needs a total revamp. yii.larryullman.com

[Aldo Paradiso]

Larry Ullman has a published now an excellent book on Yii 2, whose details can be seen at larry.pub