I am the head of a development team for a French Logistics company. We are busy considering moving over to Yii but I have quite a few questions. We do most of our development in PhP with MySql and other databases in the background.
Our main job is our Intranet. We have a Intranet that allows us to do the various processes that happens at a Logisics company. We are able to, for example create PDF’s with lists of commands, genrate factures, print etiquettes for the different transporters etc.
My question is will we be able to do this in Yii. The current intranet is already pretty old and diferent pieces has been added on over the years. At this point in time it is becoming unmanageable. We made the decision to redo the intranet. I would like to do it in a structured manner if possible. Will I be able to do this in Yii? There will be various applications in the intranet. Also we will be 5 or 6 developers working on it at the same time. Will Yii help all teh people to code in the same way? Will it go faster? How long is the average time to learn how to use Yii?
I’m not by any mean an expert in Yii, but those requirments dosen’t sound impossible, especially with all extensions which exists (creating pdf’s etc) it could probably reduce development time compared to code those functions manually.
I have developed an application in which invoicing was a requirment and Yii proved to be extremly flexible and right choice for that project.
The learning time is very individual I think, but if you have developed in PHP earlier / Object oriented programming (could be another language, mine was from Java) you should be able to get the basics quite fast, and if you dont have done O&O / MVC pattern before you have a great guide which will do the trick
Will Yii help all teh people to code in the same way? Will it go faster? How long is the average time to learn how to use Yii?
Ans : That depend on experience of people and their skill of learning, and standerds and flow they use and project management is the biggest part.
Is it possible with Yii?
Ans : You can do all things which you can do with Core PHP, and if management, and development is proper than much faster than Core PHP. ( You can study Yii features from site )
I’d say yes, but you/they will certainly have to set guidelines, like for naming conventions, fat controller / thin model or the opposite, use of modules, widgets, centralize menu management (do not underestimate such things).
For instance: will you name all tables, fields, methods, controllers, views, etc. in English or French? English will help make it more universal (yes, even if it’s an intranet) while French would make it more personal if I may say.
Bottom line: once you settle on some (the?) guidelines, you’ll all ready to work as a team
I believe so. I have a quite good experience with PHP, and I had almost no OOP or PHP framework knowledge, and I was grasping the main stuff in 2 weeks. First multitenant app (with workflow and statistics, PDF reports, and invoicing) was ready in 3 man-month of intense work.
I’m upgrading two systems used on the intranet where I work to Yii (are old, made with Dreamweaver).
It is currently in testing and am having great results. I use the common systems recusros: PDF reports, export to Excel, etc., and am currently trying connection with AD (LDAP).
I can tell you that, depending on your experience Yii Framework will greatly speed the work of your team.
I am pretty sure that we are going to go with Yii.
@bennouna - The names of the DB’s tables etc will all be in French. We already did a project together as a team. We all follow the same conventions etc. We are employing another 3 people this week so I need to get them up to speed as well on his.
