Yii Application Development Cookbook, 2nd Edition: A Cookbook covering both practical Yii application development tips and the most important Yii features

408 Pages·2013·3.28 MB·English

by  Alexander Makarov

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Yii Application
Development
Cookbook
Second Edition
A Cookbook covering both practical Yii application
development tips and the most important Yii features
Alexander Makarov
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
www.it-ebooks.info
Yii Application Development Cookbook
Second Edition
Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
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except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without
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and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly
or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies
and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt
Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: August 2011
Second edition: April 2013
Production Reference: 1150413
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-78216-310-7
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Cover Image by Alexander Makarov ([email protected])
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Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Alexander Makarov Kranti Berde
Reviewers Proofreaders
Maurizio Domba Maria Gould
Thomas Jantz Paul Hindle
Lawrence A. Herman
Acquisition Editor
Usha Iyer Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Lead Technical Editor
Joel Noronha Graphics
Ronak Dhruv
Technical Editors
Hardik B. Soni Production Coordinator
Ankita Meshram Nilesh R. Mohite
Cover Work
Nilesh R. Mohite
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About the Author
Alexander Makarav is an experienced engineer from Russia and has been a Yii
framework core team member since 2010. Before joining the Yii core team, he participated
in the CodeIgniter community growth in Russia. In 2009, he finished the Russian translation
of the framework documentation and created the Russian community website. In 2012, he
released the Russian version of the book along with Russian community members. In the
same year, he was the technical reviewer for three more books:
f The Yii Book: Developing Web Applications Using the Yii PHP Framework,
Larry Ullman
f Web Application Development with Yii and PHP, Jeff Winesett
f Yii Rapid Application Development Hotshot, Lauren O'Meara and James Hamilton
In his free time, Alexander writes technical blog at http://rmcreative.ru/, speaks at
conferences, and enjoys movies, music, traveling, photography, and languages. He currently
resides in Voronezh, Russia with his beloved wife and daughter.
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About the Reviewers
Maurizio Domba is a frontend and backend web developer with over 20 years of
professional experience in computer programming and 10 years in web development.
He is part of the Yii core development team since August 2010 and is an active member
of the Yii community.
At the moment he is developing intranet web applications for an export-import enterprise and
working on other international projects, always trying to help others to improve their code and
project usability.
When not programming the Web, he is programming his wife and kids, always with a smile on
his face, open-hearted and open-minded. He loves climbing, martial arts, meditation,
and salsa.
Thomas Jantz brings his background in language and art to his career as a web application
development consultant at Plum Flower Software. His projects include an emphasis on rapid
application development and user experience.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Under the Hood 7
Introduction 7
Using getters and setters 7
Using Yii events 10
Using import and autoloading 17
Using exceptions 20
Configuring components 24
Configuring widget defaults 27
Using Yii core collections 28
Working with requests 32
Chapter 2: Router, Controller, and Views 37
Introduction 38
Configuring URL rules 38
Generating URLs by path 41
Using regular expressions in URL rules 45
Creating URL rules for static pages 48
Providing your own URL rules at runtime 51
Using a base controller 55
Using external actions 57
Displaying static pages with CViewAction 61
Using flash messages 63
Using the controller context in a view 64
Reusing views with partials 66
Using clips 68
Using decorators 70
Defining multiple layouts 71
Paginating and sorting data 73
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Table of Contents
Chapter 3: AJAX and jQuery 77
Introduction 77
Loading a block through AJAX 77
Managing assets 83
Including resources in the page 88
Working with JSON 92
Passing configuration from PHP to JavaScript 95
Handling variable number of inputs 98
Rendering content at the client side 105
Chapter 4: Working with Forms 119
Introduction 119
Writing your own validators 119
Uploading files 122
Adding CAPTCHA 126
Customizing CAPTCHA 131
Creating a custom input widget with CInputWidget 134
Chapter 5: Testing Your Application 139
Introduction 139
Setting up the testing environment 139
Writing and running unit tests 143
Using fixtures 149
Testing the application with functional tests 155
Generating code coverage reports 160
Chapter 6: Database, Active Record, and Model Tricks 165
Introduction 166
Getting data from a database 166
Defining and using multiple DB connections 172
Using scopes to get models for different languages 175
Processing model fields with AR event-like methods 178
Applying markdown and HTML 181
Highlighting code with Yii 183
Automating timestamps 189
Setting up an author automatically 191
Implementing single table inheritance 193
Using CDbCriteria 197
Chapter 7: Using Zii Components 199
Introduction 199
Using data providers 199
Using grids 206
ii
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Table of Contents
Using lists 214
Creating custom grid columns 219
Chapter 8: Extending Yii 225
Introduction 225
Creating model behaviors 226
Creating components 232
Creating reusable controller actions 236
Creating reusable controllers 239
Creating a widget 243
Creating CLI commands 245
Creating filters 249
Creating modules 251
Creating a custom view renderer 258
Making extensions distribution-ready 263
Chapter 9: Error Handling, Debugging, and Logging 267
Introduction 267
Using different log routes 267
Analyzing the Yii error stack trace 274
Logging and using the context information 277
Implementing your own smart 404 handler 281
Chapter 10: Security 287
Introduction 287
Using controller filters 287
Using CHtml and CHtmlPurifier to prevent XSS 292
Preventing SQL injections 296
Preventing CSRF 301
Using RBAC 305
Chapter 11: Performance Tuning 313
Introduction 313
Following best practices 313
Speeding up session handling 317
Using cache dependencies and chains 321
Profiling an application with Yii 327
Leveraging HTTP caching 337
Chapter 12: Using External Code 343
Introduction 343
Using Zend Framework from Yii 343
Customizing the Yii autoloader 348
Using Kohana inside Yii 353
iii
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