Yii2 dev digest #5 Jan'14

• People are contributing quite a lot of messages translation. Have a look and make pull request with your native language! Hey, Klingonians, where are you ! :)
• CONTRIBUTING.md appeared in Yii2 repo. With main links to contribution instructions.
• Draft implementation of REST component/controller, discussion around it. Personally I am very intersted in (REST)API support as I am dealing with (creating) a lot of them in my work. And I am looking forward whay will be proposed by @qiangxue.
• Once again started discussion about separating “attributes” and “DB attributes” for ActiveRecord or having some "data-mapper"-like approach in AR. This topic is very interesting and non-trivial, suggest you to get into it.
• Added support for installing packages conforming to PSR-4 standard, also all packages migrated to PSR-4 folder structure
• Debug module remade to use GridView + ArrayDataProvider also a lot of visual enhancements were made.
• Added support for retrieving sub-array element or child object property through ArrayHelper::getValue(). Very handy and removes boilerplate isset checks.
• API docs generator ready. Here are docs for a framework and for extensions
• Added Image Helper based on Imageine - that's really long awaited thing !
• jQuery 2.0 now distributed with Yii2 by default, but it is still being discussed
• Added postgresql QueryBuilder::checkIntegrity and QueryBuilder::resetSequence usefull for Postgres fuxtures.
• NO plans to adopt PSR-3 compliant logger class
• Charset is now explicitly set to UTF-8 when serving JSON
• Discussion on test additions - AspectMock not included, Specify included. Personally I like Specify sugar very much.
• DOCS - i18n in views
• Faker fixture generator integrated and DOC for Fixtures
• Codeception tests added to bacis app
• AuthClient Extension usage documentation
• DICSUSSION - Display current routes
• More thougnts on Admin Panel for advanced app
• Added support for building "EXISTS" and "NOT EXISTS" query conditions
• MongoDB Session class and MongoDB Cache class
• HHVM support of Yii2 is being evaluated, not perfect yet.
• Started docs for integration Yii2 with 3rd party libraries : Using Yii in 3rd-Party Systems, Using Yii2 with Yii1.
• DISCUSSION : Fixtures as classes with custom initialisers. It could open wide possibilities like fixture dependecy, complex DB structures creation before adding fixture data in db etc.

Yii2 Tips & Tricks

• Why do I need to use Yii::createObject instead just new

Just avoiding new and replacing it with a string + method call that does exactly the same is pointless. The thing is that you can do the following. Let's assume we have hardcoded class name:

class Rocket
{
  public function fly()
  {
    $engine = new Engine();
    return $engine->work();
  }
}
$rocket = new Rocket();
$rocket->fly();

You can do it better:

class Rocket
{
  public $engine = '\app\rocket\lightspeed\Engine';

  public function fly()
  {
    $engine = Yii::createObject($this->engine);
    return $engine->work();
  }
}
$rocket = new Rocket();
$rocket->engine = [
  'class' => 'app\rocket\gasoline\Engine',
  'fuel' => 'Gas',
];
if (!$rocket->fly()) {
  echo 'Well, that was pretty old engine...';
}

• @

Extension MAY use yii2- in the composer package name (e.g vendor\yii2-api-adapter or vendor\my-yii2-package (URL).

• @

You can enable/disable CSRF validation per controller/action by setting Controller::enableCsrfValidation in beforeAction or through some behavior.

• @

relation names are case sensitive now in Yii 2, unlike 1.1.

• How ot localise Views

You can use i18n in your views to provide support for different languages. For example, if you have view views/site/index.php and you want to create special case for russian language, you create ru-RU folder under the view path of current controller/widget and put there file for russian language as follows views/site/ru-RU/index.php.

• @

\Yii::$app->urlManager->createUrl('date-time/fast-forward',['id' => 105]); returns /index.php/date-time/fast-forward?id=105 instead of /index.php/date-time/fast-forward/id/105 @qiangxue : If I remember correctly, Yii2 is no longer accepting name/value/name/value arguments automatically but it should be verified. If it's true, this PR should be merged as is. Yes, this is by design for Yii 2. There's no benefit for this format.

• Why not name \yii\BaseYii as \yii\base\Yii ?

Because it follows the same pattern as other static helper classes: Xyz and BaseXyz.

• Once again about Creating URLs

echo $this->createurl('/date-time/fast-forward', ['id' => 105]); // url for action the case sensitive controller, DateTimeController::actionFastForward

• How to run Migrations before Codeception test

Anyway if framework does not provide some feature you can always bypass it. I use the following approach to reuse migrations for the unit/functional tests:

abstract class TestCaseDb extends TestCase
{
    /**
     * @var boolean indicates if database migrations have been applied.
     */
    protected static $_isDbMigrationApplied = false;

    /**
     * Apply db migrations to the current database.
     * This method allows to keep test database up to date.
     */
    public static function applyDbMigrations()
    {
        $migrateController = new MigrateController('migrate', Yii::$app);
        $migrateController->interactive = false;
        ob_start();
        ob_implicit_flush();
        $migrateController->runAction('up');
        ob_clean();
    }

    public static function setUpBeforeClass()
    {
        if (!static::$_isDbMigrationApplied) {
            static::applyDbMigrations();
            static::$_isDbMigrationApplied = true;
        }
    }
}

• How to cache DB Query

For caching the result of database queries you can wrap them in calls to yii\db\Connection::beginCache() and yii\db\Connection::endCache() :

$connection->beginCache(60); // cache all query results for 60 seconds.
// your db query code here...
$connection->endCache();

• How to combine and compress assets JS/CSS in Yii2

read the docs :)

Read previous digests

• Yii2 dev digest #4 Dec'13
• Yii2 dev digest #3 Dec'13
• Yii2 dev digest #2 Dec'13