Yii Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition

This book is essential if you want to master YII. The book also explains some of the most advanced features you'll need to build a rich Yii website. If you want to save your time and learn Yii in short time, follow as much as you can from this book

I like because this has step to step explanation, concise and easy for understand, but maybe with more examples this would be great!

This for Yii version 1. It is worse than useless for version 2 which has already been out since 2014.

DISCLAIMER: I got a free review copy of the eBook version of "Yii Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition" from the publisher. I was really excited to dive into Alexander Makarov's Yii book, mainly because he is a member of the Yii framework core team, and also one of the most helpful contributors in the Yii forum. I however took the time to read the book from cover to cover over a week, and while I've read each recipe including the printed code, I haven't tested any specific one. I personally like cookbooks, but this one shouldn't be relied on to learn Yii from scratch, as it is intended for PHP developers that are already familiar with the framework. It lists 90 recipes split over the same 13 independent chapters that were already organizing the first edition. One of the issues with that approach is that you end up with recipe groups rather than logical chapters, but that shouldn't stop you from studying and testing individual recipes. This edition corrects the errata found in the first one (and adds a few), and uses a more comfortable monospace font for code listings and code words. Compared to the first edition, all original recipes seem to be kept in place, and there are only 3 new ones. For the lazy, Alexander Makarov also created a GitHub repository with the code provided in most of the recipes. What I specially liked in this cookbook is that the author shares his deep knowledge of Yii's core mechanisms, and implements beautiful reusable code in efficient --and tasteful-- efficient recipes, with a steady goal of performance. And although the recipes are independent, some are in fact linked or complementary, and each can be learnt and used straight away without any prerequisite. It however took me some recipes --the whole first chapter in fact-- to get used to the "How to do it.../How it works..." structure. It's a pity that the table of contents is rather conservative and names recipes after Yii features or concepts, and not according to the recipe result. I would have preferred recipes named like "Learn to code a complete to-do webapp in Yii using REST, JSON, and doT" instead of (or in addition to) "Rendering content at the client side", or at least an alternative summary with recipes' achievements. The intrinsic value of most of recipes is high or very high: I rated most of them 4 or 5/5. One outstanding exception is the "Chapter 7: Using Zii Components" because its 4 recipes are below par, and what can be found in the Yii Wikis regarding Zii widgets usage and customization is far more interesting. I rate "Yii Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition" 4,5/5 to leave some room of improvement. It is nonetheless an excellent addition to Yii books in general and provides several unique and enlightening recipes that are extremely useful and inspiring to the serious Yii 1.1.x developer.

every developer has their own preference in how technical books are written. this is not mine. tough to follow as the recipes don't seem to flow well from one to the next.

I am crazy reading this book, learning 100%! Thanks a lot for this excelent book! i hope learn so much!

The cookbook covers practical Yii application development tips which will help you develop better applications, and it also has recipes for important Yii features which are very useful to know. The book is written by Alexander Makarov who is an experienced engineer from Russia and has been a Yii framework core team member since 2010. He also was the technical reviewer for three other books related to Yii, so you can be sure the cookbook is written by someone who knows inner workings of Yii framework. The cookbook has a similar format to other PacktPub cookbooks and is easy to follow, but you should have at least a basic understanding on how Yii framework works before starting with recipes. The recipes are split to 13 chapters that will show you how to use Yii efficiently. The cookbook contains 90 recipes (if my finger counting is correct) and covers a wide range of topics. Recipes could be categorized in: simple recipes (you're probably already using them), advanced (or good to know) recipes, complex recipes (which will need more fiddling around to completely understand how they work) and recipes which will make you question yourself "Why the hell I'm not using this in my application?". If you're serious about learning Yii framework you should definitely buy this book. Even if you already have a good understanding of Yii framework I'm sure you will find recipes which will make you even better. Of course if you're just thinking about learning Yii framework you shouldn't start with this book. You can find a more in-depth review at the following page http://www.ifdattic.com/2013/06/02/review-of-yii-application-development-cookbook-se

I received a free copy of this book to make a review and here it is. FIRST, WHAT IS YII? - FOR THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT YII IS. Yii is a php framework that can be used in both small and large projects. It provides all the classes and features necessary for any application. It Implements the MVC architecture, provides with the Active Record pattern as well a data access object (DAO) to easily use a database, makes it easier to internationalize an application, provides caching, authentication, test and scaffolding tools. Yii even supports command-line applications. I would not recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn Yii. This book is oriented to developers who have a basic idea of how Yii works and how to use it. ABOUT THE AUTHOR The book was written by Alexander Makarav, an active member of the Yii framework team since 2010. He was also the technical reviewer for other Yii books: - The Yii Book: Developing Web Applications Using the Yii PHP Framework, Larry Ullman - Web Application Development with Yii and PHP - Yii Rapid Application Development Hotshot ABOUT THE BOOK This book contains about 90 code recipes to use Yii in an efficient, clean and maintainable way. Each recipe usually has these sections: "How to do it...", "How it works...", "There's more..." and "See also". Aside from these sections, there is always a brief introduction explaining what the recipe is about and what it does. Sometimes there is a fifth section called "Getting Ready" which provides the steps or information you must follow before trying out the recipe. The "How to do it..." section is basically a step by step explanation on how to do the recipe. It also provides some information to understand the feature that is being shown in the recipe. After the recipe has been explained, the "How it works..." section will explain just that, how the recipe works. Then at the "There's more..." section you will get complementary information related to the recipe such as links and alternative ways or variations related to the recipe. Finally, the "See also" section will provide other recipes related to the one you have read. This is very useful to better understand the pieces of code coming from other recipes within the book. All the chapters in this book contain recipes related to a topic such as database access, testing, maintenance, etc. The first chapter contains recipes to better understand and use Yii's main features such as getters, setters, exceptions, auto loading, etc. The second chapter contains recipes related to URL management, views and controllers helping you to make your application more "URL friendly", reuse code for actions, controllers and views and organize both views and data within a view using layouts and paginations. The third chapter has recipes related to AJAX and jQuery from loading specific javascript files to loading and rendering content using Ajax. This chapter however, focuses on how to use jQuery through Yii's classes and methods rather than using jQuery itself but it does provide a links related to jQuery for more information. The forth chapter will guide you to handle forms and their validation as well as tricks to upload files, add CAPTCHA and creating form widgets. The fifth chapter is all about testing your application with automated unit and functional tests. It includes the recipe to install all the components needed to use those tests. The sixth chapter covers all the main recipes to connect to a database and get data from it using ActiveRecord, DAO and the query builder as well as very useful tips to store information automatically for timestamps and other fields and retrieve specific information. The seventh chapter has recipes for a library in Yii called Zii that has different components like grids and lists. These recipes are very useful since they answer common questions about the components like how to include related information and how to make it sortable and searchable, especially using grids. The eighth chapter explains (using the recipes) how to extend the features Yii has to meet your needs as well as use Yii's own features to create modules, filters, widgets, components, etc. The ninth chapter gives recipes to handle errors, debug and log errors and other information. This chapter also includes a recipe to create a "Smart 404 handler" which will give the user alternative information related to a page that was not found. Security is a very important feature for any project and chapter ten meets that requirement with useful tips on how to prevent XSS, CSRF and SQL injection attacks. It also shows how to implement a role-based access control. Performance Tuning is the topic for the eleventh chapter. This chapter has recipes to configure your application properly to maximize performance, to measure performance and identify bottlenecks and other problems that compromise speed. The chapter also guides you to implement HTTP caching to tell clients that content has not changed and also will make a site faster to index by search engine robots. Yii is very easy to customize and also is open to use third party applications, so chapter twelve guides you on how to use those applications in your own using Yii. Finally, chapter thirteen will give you recipes to set up your Yii-based application to achieve a better development environment and also guide you to deploy your application. These recipes show for example, how to move and share component directories, how to better organize an application's configuration file and run cron jobs (scheduled tasks). WHY SHOULD YOU GET THIS BOOK? This book is great for two things. First, is great to learn more Yii features in a very practical way. This book doesn't just mention the most useful and interesting features. It shows you how to use them by providing real-application examples. Learning these features will make your development faster, easier to read and more maintainable. Second, it is great to use it as a reference guide. Whenever you don't know or aren't sure how to do something using Yii, this book will probably have the answer since all the recipes cover the most common questions and their "how-to" guides. The book covers the most needed features in any project such as how to upload files, display data in grids, use forms and validate them, take good security measures, etc. It will save you time since you probably won't have to write everything from scratch. Even if you don't find a recipe that will solve your problem, you might find one that you may use. The book also provides the link to download the code shown in the book for you to try out. MY EXPERIENCE WITH YII I have been working with Yii for about two years. WHAT WAS MISSING? I was expecting some more recipes. Especially one that could explain how to make Ajax file uploads and how to edit information using a grid and ajax since I find those features very useful. I also have my doubts when in the code, methods like empty() are used since I think that method is not reliable.

A book you'll keep referring to, so that's got to be good. Exactly what it says on the cover "recipe" so you pick and choose and adapt the code to suit your own projects. You'll need to have had a play with Yii , "get" the whole framework thing, be an OOPHP convert and be ready to build your first project. Although its possible to find most of what you want to do online, I still enjoy a book to read and see the techniques used in the context of a project feature or function. I think its a great supplement to online documentation and can help you make better sense of it. I've enjoyed reading this book.

Nichts für Anfänger, aber wer schon mal was mit Yii gemacht hat und sein Wissen vertiefen möchte, für den ist das Buch genau richtig. Liest sich gut und es kommen interessante Tips drin vor...

Per leggere questo libro dovete essere dei programmatori esperti, oppure dei geni. Lasciatelo stare. Esempi scritti male e poco chiari.

Schon Ausgabe 1 war hilfreich. In Ausgabe 2 sind viele Neuerungen eingegangen - also Top aktuell. Informationsgehalt für dieses komfortable Framework ist hoch auch für Einsteiger geeignet