What is Yii?

Yii is a high-performance, component-based PHP framework for developing large-scale Web applications rapidly. It enables maximum reusability in Web programming and can significantly accelerate your Web application development process.

What is Yii best for?

Yii is a generic Web programming framework that can be used for developing virtually any type of Web application. Because it is light-weight and equipped with sophisticated caching mechanisms, it is especially suited to high-traffic applications, such as portals, forums, content management systems (CMS), e-commerce systems, etc.

Set up webserver with nginx and PHP-FPM using Docker, link

1. Build the images
   sudo docker build -t peter/fpm ./images/fpm/ && docker build -t peter/ngx ./images/nginx/

2. Build and start the container
   docker-compose up

Installation and create skeleton application, link

1. download Yii 1.1 source code at here
2. unpack the .tar.gz and move to dockerfolder/app/ tar -xvzf yii-1.1.22.bf1d26.tar.gz
3. go into the framework folder
   ./yiic webapp ../testdrive

Update the ngx_conf/locations.conf

# yii-1.1.22 location
location /yii-1.1.22/ {
    autoindex on;
    autoindex_exact_size on;
    autoindex_format html;
    autoindex_localtime on;
} 

Make sqlite db connection in protected/config/main.php within return array

return array(
// sqlite database connection
    'components'=>array(
        'db'=>array(
            'connectionString'=>'sqlite:protected/data/testdrive.db',
        ),
    ),
);

Allow Gii modules in /protected/config/main.php within return array

    'modules'=>array(
        // uncomment the following to enable the Gii tool
        'gii'=>array(
            'class'=>'system.gii.GiiModule',
            'password'=>'Password',
            // If removed, Gii defaults to localhost only. Edit carefully to taste.
            // 'ipFilters'=>array('127.0.0.1','::1'),
               'ipFilters'=> False,
        ),
    ),

Allow path-format URLS to access Gii in /protected/config/main.php within components, link

    'urlManager'=>array(
        'urlFormat'=>'path',
        'rules'=>array(
            'gii'=>'gii',
            'gii/<controller:\w+>'=>'gii/<controller>',
            'gii/<controller:\w+>/<action:\w+>'=>'gii/<controller>/<action>',
        ),
    ),

Static structure of Yii application

A Typical Worflow

The flow of MCV

Reference

1. An Introduction to PHP YII Framework For The Beginners
2. An introduction to Yii framework- part 2
3. Introducing Gii of Yii framework