Initial thoughts on Yii..

My initial thoughts on the Yii PHP framework can be summed up in one word:  Hell yeah!  Okay, it was more like two words, but it doesn't change the fact that I am very impressed so far with Yii.  Admittedly I have not done any extensive work with the framework as of yet.  The majority of my experience with Yii to date has been reading the (very good) documentation, playing around with its code generation utilities, and looking at how the demo applications were built.

So far the aspect of the framework I am most impressed with is how it is integrated with JQuery.  CakePHP injects javascript code throughout the page, a practice that most Jquery developers cringe at the thought of.  This is also why most Cake developers have abandoned the use of the JS helpers in favor of writing their own code.  This is why I like how Yii integrates JQuery so much: for the most part it separates the JQuery code into separate files and includes them at the top of the script.  This makes me happy.  This will also reduce the amount of time I spend creating my own custom JQuery scripts, since I will actually be using the helpful functions that are included with Yii.

Another aspect of Yii that I am impressed with is its documentation.  Cake has some good documentation, but often key elements are outdated or missing. What is also frustrating is the lack of documented best practices to use with the framework. I often found my answers from blog posts or forums, and wondered why such simple answers weren't included in the documentation to begin with.  This is not the case with Yii.  The documentation itself is very thorough, updated constantly, and very clearly defines best practices. What's more is the generated code as well as the demos it ships with show the majority of the functionality shipped with Yii in use.  This is great because if I want to see how to create a form in Yii I can either consult the documentation or pull up any of the demos that came with the framework. Handy!

Finally, the code generation utility shipped with yii is excellent.  In just a matter of minutes, Yii can generate a fully-functioning skeleton application complete with a login/logout system, contact form, CRUD, database access, etc.. all integrated with JQuery.  This has been a great skeleton to start with, and has managed to save me loads of setup time integrating basic components into the application.  (I can't say the same for Cake's skeleton application that is generated).

When I began playing around with Yii, I fully expected to find parts of the framework where I would sit back and reminisce of my days in the Cake world.  To my surprise, the more I learn about Yii the happier I am to embrace it.  Nothing against Cake, but I would recommend Yii to any developer looking for a powerful MVC PHP framework.