What does this code do

The Yii documentation is very good written, there are just not very much examples.

I agree that the definitive guide should be more visible.

About the support, I can confirm that there is a good community of people answering question, and many of them are quite new but very active.

Lets stop all the bashing. I going the Yii way coz it’s Fast and secure and is a good backend for flex and iphone apps. Best part for me in Yii are the widgets esp. List View(it’s just awesome)

k i will chuck them for now. i did go through rest(50% of the doc)of the stuff and coming from cakephp they(database interactions,MVC,AR,ORM) all seamed natural but i still stick to my point that the Official guide is bad. It goes into detail mentioning what it extends from but does not mention where can i place those files to point an example.

ONE MORE THING HOW EASY IS IT integrate a normal php s/w with yii. Say PHPBB or wordpress or chat s/w

I can only add that in my opinion either this topic should be pinned (though title will mislead many) or there should be something like "Beginners FAQ", where it would be clearly pointed out that every one is kindly asked to:

[list=1][]Read Official Guide, Blog Demo Description and maybe some Cookbook articles.[]Explore and try to run every demo and every example found in these docs.[*]Search forum thoroughly.[/list]

Before asking a beginners questions like where to put files or what to do to start an application.

I don’t think this topic is worth being pinned.

So what do you do when you think the official guide suck?

Well, instead of whining - and essentially asking others to spend their valuable free time rewriting it to your liking - you could add comments to the guide, maybe even open up tickets at the issue tracker, start a topic in the tips and tricks forum so that you can work together with the rest of the community writing a small guide about a specific subject.

It might even lead to a new page in the community wiki/cookbook, who knows?

Look at this:

http://www.yiiframework.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6129-total-fresher-in-php-frameworks-and-yii-i-dont-understand-tutorials/

That’s a prime example of what to do if you’re stuck and lost and would like a guide.

Don’t expect others to walk you by the hand.

Not unless you inspire them to do so.

Right. But I was thinking about all those people who are asking questions (very basic, answered hundreds of times) on the forum without any effort on reading documentation or doing anything you pointed out.

Of course, you approach is by far better. But let’s realize how many people will follow your way and how many will open a new thread forum, without even thinking about reading documentation or searching the forum first? In other words: compare number of hard-working beginners to Yii versus lazy ones! :)

For the record I did do a Google search but that didn’t yield any useful results. Also i went through almost 50% of the official guide try out some simple examples.

As a beginner i should atleast be knowing where to create a respective file(forget about what is to be put into that file). i.e basic structure(may not be that basic from what some of u ppl say)

@Web:

There’s really no need to defend yourself. Why? :)

Yes, Yii is not as widely used as CakePHP.

It’s still a well guarded secret in many ways.

So Google is not jam packed with Yii results. Unfortunately.

And the forum search here is only useful if you click the cog (advanced search) instead of just entering something in the main search box.

That’s a fact.

So let’s concentrate on the plus’es. ;)

Basics of MVC:

http://www.larryullman.com/2009/10/08/understanding-mvc/

Read Larrys Yii tutorials - they are great:

http://www.larryullman.com/2009/06/18/introduction-to-the-yii-framework/

Then we have to define, what results did you expect? I put Yii word into Google and among first results I got: official website, information on phpframeworks.com and entry on English Wikipedia. I wouldn’t expect more and certainly wouldn’t call these results not useful.

Maybe you were looking for it like a year ago or earlier? Search results are getting changed each day as Yii community grows, producing more and more websites and blogs or other kind of information repository about it.

When you visit framework official website, go to documentation, skip information about book, go to guides, you will see a link to The Official Guide. Inside it you will find Getting started Chapter (first one) and “Creating First Yii Application” subchapter (last one in first chapter). There you have everything explained the way it can’t be better, including exact description of each Yii app folder structure, which is answer to your question, where to create files.

You may say that this is hard to find. I won’t disagree with that. I only say that Creating First Yii Application was the chapter I read first. I don’t know how I did it, but I was somehow intentionally lead to it, when looking into documentation, what was the first thing I did after visiting official Yii website.

And beside, you have yiic tool, which has webapp command which builds everything for you. You would expect more?

I completely agree with you @jacmoe. Yii is new cake is old. I know what MVC is and it’s basic structure as i am a cakephp programmer. what i meant was on little bit deeper like where to put custon widgets, filters etc. Anyways thanks for the second link

I did go through the official guide. I again say it’s not that good. The chapters on Database and Querying are simple. To be honest cake’s is also not that good but it’s bit better. This is a complaint with most framework. Can i get a link from someone where i can see all the widgets in actions(i really love them they are a great time saver).

Check out Yii Playground (link in Menu - Documentation - Resources) :)

I am coming from CakePHP myself, and Yii feels more alive and flexible.

That’s all highly subjective, of course… ;)

With Yii I can get things done as it’s not getting in my way - a perfect blend between features and flexibility.