Hi friends! Our developer wrote an article about Backvendor. It can be useful for you.
Application structure - is one of the main reasons why PHP programmers evolves from wheel-inventors to framework users. Strict agreement of app structure and naming conventions allows us to get rid of tons of code, to make app workflow predictable and to consolidate team efforts for quick and quality writing valuable business functions - without eternal refactoring of routers, controllers etc.
Yii Framework has console command to generate basic application skeleton that allow almost immediately to start working on web app. And Gii Module allows to generate classes boilerplates for models, controllers and generic CRUD interface. But if your application functionality is beyond bounds of the simple web site - framework by itself already does not have built in helpers to generate core complex architecture.
And besides of all good schemas of app structure organization are described and well know (actually not so “well” 
) it does not free us from making those boilerplate construction from time to time in new projects. Here comes to help - readymade application structure skeletons.
Let’s consider big web system with : frontend (web site for ordinary uses), backend (admin panel to manage web app) and web service API (to let mobile apps, for example, to interact with your web application). Such a structure should allow shared core with business models usage, scaling app in future and physical separation parts of application among different servers.
To quickly deploy such an app structure we can use for example open solutions from companies Clevertec, MobiDev or Herzogkommunikation. Mainly these solutions are application skeletons that could be used in all kinds of projects from small web site to big systems as described above (gladly Yii framework in any case will not require to write a lof auxiliary code even for a small project that uses scalable architecture).
So let’s try to look on advantages and weak of these solutions.
Phundament
http://phundament.com/ by http://www.herzogkommunikation.de/
Killer feature :
Pros :
-
A lot more that just app skeleton
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Using composer you can setup a CMS like solution (user management, RBAC, )
-
Twitter bootstrap GUI
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Extended DB migrations
Cons :
- A lot more that just app skeleton
yes this is one of advantages, but for some projects it could be a biggest disadvantages - in a lot of cases you will not need all of this
YiiBoilerplate
https://github.com/clevertech/YiiBoilerplate by http://www.clevertech.biz
One of the best solution currently at my point of view.
Also it has a number of related projects as YiiBackboneBoilerplate (https://github.com/clevertech/YiiBackboneBoilerplate) to provide web service structure for Backbone.js JS apps and Yii-Booster (http://yii-booster.clevertech.biz/) that integrates some YiiBootstrap ext. features with own modules like Grids etc. - combining these 3 you can easily get starting ground almost for all types of apps.
Killer features :
Pros :
-
Really good structured and clearly separated
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Behat + Mink test structure included (BDD testing aproaches)
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Public assets gathered in separate directory (as for me this approach should become recommended by framewok)
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Only minimum required extensions bundled
Cons :
- Postdeploy actions are handled by custom php script (that would be not so nice and not abstract enough to extend/change)
Backvendor
http://mobidev.biz/backvendor by http://mobidev.biz
Killer features :
- Versioned web service engine with autogenerated documentation
Pros :
-
Phing based deployment script
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Backend pages extension that automatically handle AR models relations and show related entities (allow to do basic admin interface with ability to manage all relations in very short time)
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Extendable JSON web service API structure
Cons :
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All components tightly coupled
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App skeleton generator is made as Yii application by itself, so if you want to modify it’s output it will be a little harder
So what is the conclusion ?
At my point of view - there is no ideal solution yet and I bet there will never be such suitable for everyone And my dream YiiAppBoilerplate is not created yet as it should be structured as well as YiiBoilerplate, I should be able to extend it via package manager as Phundament and I’d rather want some extensions like JSON web service and separated Backend pages extension from Backvendor.
Let’s hope that as rumored Yii2 will have Composer packages manager support, Twitter Bootstrap bundled and different app skeleton generators (for basic and decoupled application) out of the box - then hopefully will not need any 3-rd party structural framewoks upon Yii and custom own conposer.json in our new projects will be enough.
