I’ve been using Yii since version 1 … I’ve done lots of projects (i’d say about 50). I know Yii.
But I am being disappointed.
Yii was glorious and wonderful in 2014-2017, but after 2018 I’m not seeing same activity.
Forums are useless, old, inactive … there’s not more Yii2 extensions or modules. Everything is “old”, unfinished, discontinued …
Now I’m facing changes in my life as coder, and I was wondering whether to wait for Yii3 (because it will be a revolution), or to switch to Laravel.
Sincerely… what do you think if this “Yii environment” situation ?
I was also in same situation, switched to laravel recently. IMO both frameworks have own perks. My motive is to learn more frameworks and technologies. I was backend Yii2 developer for last 6 years but this year i decided to go fullstack and learn major frontend/backend frameworks.
Yii is a complete framework !
I From Argentina, in American is very dificult find Developers with this skills. I work with PHP from last 12 years and with yii from version 1. But also know that is very important learn new Framework.
Laravel have a big community. This is very important.
Many frameworks grows to the level where things get stable and activities become less. I’m sure we will see decline in activities on Yii2 as most of things you need or questions you will ever ask are mostly answered already.
The forum became semi-dead thanks to Yii team introducing Slack channel.
I have always believed Slack channel is a bad idea, as it kills advantages the forums have had. The only advantage I see is realtime conversation. But that isn’t an advantage given all knowledge that is being lost everyday and same questions keeps popping up after sometime as there is no lookup record.
I still believe it is not too late to “kill” the Slack channel.
I believe this is the result of duplicated efforts. You search for RBAC extensions and few appears. They all try to do the same thing. If those efforts were concentrated into one or two extensions only you would have something durable as it will be used almost by all communities. the same for user management extensions and others.
Switching or not depends on a lot of factors. For example what benefit will you get from business PoV by switching? Will you get more customers? But also what about old Projects? Do you have time to learn and cement your Laravel Skills? And many other factors.
Also I believe Laravel have its own woes, you need to understand them before switching, if that indeed happens to be the best choice!
Personally I think Yii2 is still solid. We use it in many different projects without issues. The expertise that we have gleaned over years have made it easy to be productive. If we need extension and is not maintained, we either Pluck the code out of it, if we need only small part or we maintain it with the project.
As of my advice, it might be biased but I believe for new Projects Yii3 is promising. Having followed a conventional where you choose your library of choice a part from core ones, is even +1 that should make you stay with Yii.
I would advise you take a drive test with Yii3 and see if you like it. There is Yii3 Telegram channel for asking questions thru your Journey. Some are already using it in their Projects.
TL;DR Check out Yii3 if you like it, start learning it!
@evstevemd I think too Yii2 is an excellent framework, but it is behind at other framework, for example from common pattern usage point of view.
Updated frameworks as Symfony and Laravel (even if I don’t like Laravel) can use latest features of programming language, PHP, such as attribute, and if you continue to use Yii2 you don’t take advantages from it.
Again, these frameworks are focusing on same point of other tecnologies framework, as NestJS on NodeJS or Spring Boot on Java, so if you need to develop with other technologies, you will be easily confident, because framework rules and patterns are the same (for example, comparing Entity).
Ok, can you tell me a WORKING and UPDATED extension
for social networks that works PERFECTLY ?
yii2-usuario was the best … WAS … linkedin works sometimes, facebook are not updated, and there’s no newer social since 2016
can you tell me other for datatables ?
nullref has awful support since it’s everything rewritten in Javascript so you can’t access properly relations and subrelations of models
for payments (stripe compatible for example) ?
for…
and so on…
These just last 3 examples has beautiful, crazy updated and reviewed plugins in Laravel, for example. Or even in NodeJS.
2amigos and kartiv were two perfect partners for Yii2 core … but they are not being continued … so they are pretty old
Anytime I search for any “extension” in github, all projects are 4 years ago (the newest!).
By the way … Yii3 started in 2019 … 60% done so far … and can’t be used yet for real working projects in live. So … waiting 2 years more with this so empty market of extensions ?
Let’s be clear, my problem with Yii is NOT the core (Thank you Sam and others for your infinite work!), but the community, extensions made (and/or updated) and “movement” of the ecosystem.
I know I can code myself (i’ve done lots of extensions), but it’s easy as a coder when you have good repositories with pretty new extensions and solutions, and a very active community behind. This forum has about 150 posts this year. Laravel (for example, 150 posts represents just the last 4 days). Have you notice tons of posts here with 0 replies ?
Also, Yii coders was easy to find in 2015 … now it’s 1 out of 100 maybe.
Let’s assume Yii environment has decreased drastically in the last 4 years.
Yii1… I’m still using it and happy with it. Am I old fashioned? It works. I can create things with it very fast. It’s fun. I tried Yii2 and Laravel, ok, but Yii1 is my favorite.
I’ve tried a lot of other frameworks.
I’ve decided that, in my case I need the maximum flexibility (I create no site, only web application and API), so I switched to Slim Framework and for every other Yii-like feature I use other libraries (somes from Cake, somes from Symfony and many others).
So I’m not stuck in a full stack framework and I can easily change and update any library and use what really suits my requirements.
For now, I’m really really happy with this solution
@LordLele This is true for small projects, but when the project will grow, you will understand the limits of a not updated framework. For not updated I mean that not use all features offered by programming language and development environment.
@fabriziocaldarelli That’s exactly why I prefer to use indipendent libraries and not a full stack framework.
With Slim I have only the minimal feature to handle HTTP request, and I can use whatever library I want, and my application are really big (they run on kubernetes cluster with dozens of machines).
Moreover, I’m not stuck if the library X is not updated, I can switch only that library with another without having to change framework.
Exactly, To develop a big or enterprise application it is needed the support of a framework, first of all to not reinvent the wheel on many important and repeating aspects.
I didn’t reinvent the wheel at all.
I simply use the best and most updated library and, if a library is not developed anymore, I can change it with another similar library, but I’m not stuck in a framework that prevent me to update some parts of code (our company has some Yii1 and Yii2 projects, so I know of what I’m speaking).
My experience is probably different because the applications where I’m working are really huge and use a lot of Google Cloud stack (Spanner, Tasks, Storage, Pub/Sub) and there is no framework that implement this technologies, so I’ve to write the glue between the framework and the Google library anyway.
After considering I decided to use Yii2 for all my new projects even now in 2022. Mainly because:
it is stable & maintained with support for latest PHP (8.1+),
has great database integration - active record for RDBMS / noSqls / elasticsearch etc …
has many components for UX development with BS4 support,
I am quite well familiar with it meaning rapid development, saving lots of time,
I already have many pre-built solutions,
Yii2 solved many issues that existed in Yii1 (meaning framework of second generation, mature)
has pretty good performance - better than Laravel and Symfony,
good documentation.
Cons are of course that:
community (support forum) has been practically killed for Yii2 - pity,
many extensions are not maintained anymore (but are all maintained at Laravel/Symfony?)
big picture gives impression that framework is dying,
But all this does not mean it cannot be used for another 5-10 years. I also like that it is monolitic framework which for me means less testing and more stability while sacrifying some of most modern features, which I dont need actually.
But if somebody wants to use latest PHP features, then yes, go with Laravel or Symfony. My opinion is that there is no need to use most modern technologies and/or features to build most modern application.
Sincerely… what do you think if this “Yii environment” situation ?
Yii needs release new version written in currently active supported PHP - and then spread in World to people see that is better alternative from Symfony and Laravel.
Is there somebody who’s keen on doing some corrections in an interesting e-learning project in Yii 2.0? It is connected to wordpress, so it takes this knowledge as well (and preferably some Angular as well… and if you can speak Polish that’s awesome :). If interested, PM me at www.speakingo.com
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