Yii is a fast, secure and professional PHP Framework. The performance chart is indeed quite impressive. According to the homepage, Yii is using a "lazy loading technique": basically include a functionality (create object) not earlier than strictly needed. Yii is also very complete in its feature set.
Compared with other PHP frameworks ..
This following comparison with other frameworks shows Yii has it all:
Why is it awesome?
Yii is quite similar to Ruby on Rails: MVC (model-view-controller) structure, ActiveRecord, CLI integration (yiic) to make the app structure, CRUD (create, read, update, delete aka scaffold), strong support for testing (unit/ fixtures), AJAX.
Of course, as any framework, there is a learning curve and you need to feel comfortable with OOP (object oriented programming). I can already see development time decreasing in the near future:
- Extensive support for model/ CRUD support with Gii (see printscreen below)
- Support for complicated database structures. Once setup the relations in the Model, no need for typing complicated SQL joins :D
- Authentication (role based), form captchas and more features, all built in from the start.
I am still in the exploring phase, but this is quite something, isn't it?
[caption id="attachment_583" align="alignnone" width="622" caption="Gii code generator at work"]
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Resources to get you going with Yii
- Yii homepage: http://www.yiiframework.com/
- Blog demo: http://www.yiiframework.com/demos/blog/ | pdf
- Screencast (good for getting a taste): How to create a blog system using Yii in less than 30 minutes
- Yii radio: http://yiiradiio.mehesz.net/
- Yii's twitter handle: http://twitter.com/#!/yiiframework
- Book: Agile Web Application Development with Yii1.1 and PHP5.
