Yii is the top 5 most used PHP frameworks. The reason for its raving popularity is partly because of the presence of advanced caching. In simple terms, the framework provides a practical solution to websites with high traffic like forums and e-commerce sites.
Introduction to Yii
Yii is an acronym for “Yes It Is”. It is an open source, MVC based, light weighted, object-oriented, PHP framework. It is quite popular among programmers for general purpose web programming. Yii is best suitable for creating modern web applications. The framework does a lot of heavy lifting by creating testable and secure websites to ensure they perform well.
There are scores of PHP frameworks. But Yii has emerged as a favorite framework for a great majority of PHP website development company for providing Rapid Development and promoting clean and DRY designs. Yii offers almost everything you would need for PHP web development. Yii offers the breadth of everything any PHP website development company would need. It comes with a few limitations and makes for a high-performance package.
Qiang Xue started Yii project on January 1, 2008. He had previous experience of developing Parado framework. The feedback he received from developers helped him chalk out the requirement of a much secured and fast framework. He started developing the project with the idea of a framework that is customizable and can meet the expectations of web 2.0 application development. After a year-long effort, the framework was officially released to the public on December 3, 2008. The highly impressive performance of the framework immediately caught the attention of developers world over and is highly popular ever since.
Here are the top three benefits of Yii Framework for Your Business
- Shorter development time
Yii is shipped with few tools aimed to automate repetitive tasks in projects. This provides a big development boost since developers can focus more on building core business requirement and business logic. For example, there is one tool called Gii. It helps in automatic code template creation for Models, Modules, Controllers, Forms, and Extensions. Gii is highly configurable which means developers have complete flexibility in creating scalable and customized code.
- Robust Security and efficient caching
Yii has in-built security mechanism such as XSS, Cross Site Scripting and also CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) prevention. Here are a few ways in which Yii effectively handles the three most important security concerns.
If your website collects data from the user in any form such as forums or contact us page, there are high chances of malicious code being injected through the posts. There are countless bots that constantly scan several million websites each day to discover new vulnerabilities. Hackers attack several websites each day. Yii framework has an extremely important component called as CHtmlPurifier. This Yii component stripes all the harmful data from the string and renders them harmless.
Yii framework offers CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgery) validation by default. This is another layer of security that prevents an infected browser from performing an unwanted action on a trusted site. CSRF helps Yii framework defeat the POST-based attacks.
Yii also implements the cookie validation technique that prevents cookies from being modified. Cookie validation uses HMAC (Hash-based message authentication code) check to makes sure if the cookie values are the same and not tampered.
Besides the security mechanism, Yii also has a very important system “caching” to significantly improve the performance of a web application. When implemented, it helps improve the response time, enhance the load time. Here is a list of various cache components for easy integration.
cMemCache – This makes use of spare RAM in many servers to act as a memory cache for frequently accessed pages and information.
cDummyCache – This component checks for the availability of cache.
cFileCache – It stores cached data using files.
- Easy to configure
Yii offers simple and convenient installation process. It is one of the best platforms for web app development in terms of ease of configuration. There are plenty of tutorials, books, and websites that provide detailed information on how to set up configuration and use the Yii framework. Yii installation is very easy and simple. You can download the basic structure from Yii website. You can also download it to your server through the composer. Once you download the basic structure for the Yii framework, extract the files and connect the files with the database by providing the right credentials. To connect the files with the database, you need to make changes to the configuration file.
Yii has great community support that means if you face any problems related to coding errors, you can take help from the community. Forums and discussion groups are a good place to start. Community members get to earn badges for their good work, helpful gesture, and support. However, they need to meet certain criteria described in the Yii framework community. The support is also available in the form of various plugins and other components.
Importance of hiring a PHP website development company
Hiring a PHP website development company with a good understanding of Yii framework plays a key role in creating robust and stable web apps and enterprise-level websites. Here are some the obvious reasons for hiring a Yii experienced PHP web development company.
Yii comes with an array of feature-rich functionality. This helps to expedite the development time and bring the product to the market sooner.
Regardless of the skill level, developers can build enterprise level application since Yii framework provides them all the component they need. They don’t have to build anything from scratch.
Any PHP website development company working on Yii has extensive experience in Modal View Controller (MVC) principles.
Yii framework allows the developers to make the optimum use of Data Access Objects (DAO).
PHP web development companies have experience and expertise in skinning techniques, which is helpful for creating themes on Yii framework.
Working on Yii framework gives the development company a good understanding of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) techniques.
When you are shortlisting a PHP web development company, ask for samples and live demonstration. During the demonstration, look for ways in which they have used all the components of Yii framework. If they are aware of all the Yii components and have used it in their previous projects, they are better equipped to makes the best use of all Yii framework components in your projects also.
Yii Framework is for Business
There are enough PHP frameworks out there, but Yii is truly for business. There are enough reasons to consider Yii for your business. The first and foremost, not-from-development, but from the business perspective, is the security of your customer’s data on your server. This is where Yii truly shines out. It comprises of highly confidential and secured core functionality. If your data is extremely sensitive and deserves a high level of security, you should build your website only on Yii.
The developers have built the Yii framework for entrepreneurs who are afraid of site hackers and online criminals. It has in-built security features to prevent XSS issues, SQL integration, Cross-site scripting, Cookie attacks, and spiky viruses and codes. Yii provides a high level of security for web-based projects and prevents the database from hacking and virus attacks. Besides in-built high-security mechanisms, Yii has other indispensable features that are good for any business websites.
Highly flexible and compatible
The framework is highly flexible and compatible with current trend-and-needs of a growing business. Yii is well positioned to handle huge traffic pressure effectively without a sign of strain. When you hire PHP developer, the biggest concern is productivity and security. A new developer needs time to learn effective handling of security threats and to matchup with the productivity level of other developers on the floor. Yii aims to solve both problems. If you hire PHP developer with relatively less experience, even they will be able to develop highly secured websites in no time because of the presence of in-built high-security mechanisms.
Great social media integration
Social media has become extremely important for businesses to stay relevant in today’s time. Yii provides direct API access to help developers easily formulates logical integration of social media modules. Yii’s social media modules can play a vital role in helping your website make global reach.
Thriving community support
Yii enjoys a highly professional, friendly and helpful community. Great community support is not just helpful for a quick start but also ensures a joyful experience while programming. Yii makes it easy to write reusable code and their great community support ensures you have help with coding errors or project-related issues. The framework helps PHP website development company or a developer to directly connect to social channels via web-based IRC terminal.
Handling growth
The framework is flexible and designed to handle server load effectively as the web traffic grows. The website built on Yii is going to perform well under huge traffic pressure effectively. It also comes packed with powerful functionality and malleable tool for quick and robust website development.
Takeaway
If you are looking to develop a PHP based application or a website for your business or a SaaS application, hiring any PHP website development company will not cut through. PHP web development with Yii framework will help you take your web app and website, online at a faster pace. Most businesses operate in a very dynamic environment where political and technological change happens at a blink of an eye. The market cannot wait for you to adjust your web apps and website programs to adapt accordingly. Fortunately, the Yii framework comes with great ability and flexibility to quickly adapt to the changing environment and stay relevant.
Author Bio:
Hemendra Singh is Managing Director and co-founder of The NineHertz, an App and Web Development Company. He is having a keen interest in the latest trends and technologies that are emerging in different domains. Being an entrepreneur in the field of IT sector, it becomes his responsibility to aid his audience with the knowledge of latest trends in the market.
