Book Image

Yii Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition - Second Edition

Book Image

Yii Application Development Cookbook - Second Edition - Second Edition

Overview of this book

The Yii framework is a rapidly growing PHP5 MVC framework often referred to as Rails for PHP. It has already become a solid base for many exciting web applications such as Stay.com and can be a good base for your developments, too. This book will help you to learn Yii quickly and in more depth for use in for your developments."Yii Application Development Cookbook" will show you how to use Yii efficiently. You will learn about taking shortcuts using core features, creating your own reusable code base, using test driven development, and many more topics that will give you a lot of experience in a moderate amount of time.The second edition fixes all errata found in the first edition and also features new recipes on the client side, HTTP caching, and using Composer with Yii.The chapters of the book are generally independent and since this book's goal is to enhance a practical approach to Yii development, you can start reading from the chapter you need most, be it Ajax and jQuery, Database, Active Record, and Model Tricks, or Extending Yii."Yii Application Development Cookbook" will help you to learn more about the Yii framework and application development practices in general, showing shortcuts and dangerous things you shouldn't do.With all the recipes grouped in 13 chapters, you will write your applications more efficiently using shortcuts and using Yii core functionality in a good way. The most interesting topics are; Yii application deployment, a guide to writing your own extensions, advanced error handling, debugging and logging, application security, performance tuning, and much more."Yii Application Development Cookbook" will help you to learn more about the Yii framework and application development practices in general. You will write your applications more efficiently using shortcuts and using Yii core functionality in a good way.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Yii Application Development Cookbook Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using data providers


Data providers are used to encapsulate common data model operations such as sorting, pagination, and querying. They are used with grids and lists extensively. Because both widgets and providers are standardized, you can display the same data using different widgets and you can get data for a widget from various providers. Switching providers and widgets is relatively transparent.

Currently CActiveDataProvider, CArrayDataProvider, and CSqlDataProvider are implemented to get data from Active Record models, arrays, and SQL queries respectively. Let's try all these providers to fill a grid with data.

Getting ready

  1. Create a new application using yiic webapp as described in the official guide.

  2. Download the Sakila database from http://dev.mysql.com/doc/index-other.html and execute the downloaded SQLs (first schema then data).

  3. Configure the database connection in protected/config/main.php.

  4. Use Gii to create a model for the film table.

How to do it...

  1. Let's start with a view for a grid...