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The Yii PHP Framework

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justice:
Btw if you want something minimal Lemonade looks interesting:

--- ---require_once 'vendors/limonade.php';
dispatch('/', 'hello');
  function hello()
  {
      return 'Hello world!';
  }
run();But its a micro framework, CodeIgniter looks like Zend Framework in comparison.

mouser:
I've been using Yii more lately and I have to say that there are some areas where it is absolutely a joy to use.  It's Active Record and Form classes make it very clean and easy to present forms, do error checking/reporting, and save/modify model data.  This is the bread and butter work of these frameworks and Yii just excels at this this kind of stuff.  It also seems to be very flexibly in terms of how you organize your code and how you handle flow of program execution.

To be sure it's not perfect, but I continue to be impressed with how smooth it is to code for, in a way that i've not been with any of the other frameworks i've looked at. 

Rover:
Hey Mouser --  I don't want to alter the thread direction, BUT have you looked at Drupal?   :-[

I have faithfully ignored it for many years.  Someone at work asked me to consider it and much to my surprise, I can drop only slightly modified php directly into a new page. (node, or whatever they call them.)  Given the steep learning curve of most php frameworks, I'm considering that I might be just as far ahead to learn the Drupal  way and simply use the CMS as a framework.

I  think you and I struggle with similar goals for perfection in tools.  It'd be really cool to not have to re-invent the wheel for normal requests like, Authentication, Intrusion prevention, DB connectivity, forms creation, processing and reporting, etc. all of that WITHOUT having to conform to the design constraints of the rabid Framework designers.  Or at least without having to spend 6 months of in-depth study, plus 3-4 projects with false starts and failures to learn the entirety of the framework design and functions.

Why can't I just have it all, right now?!!

Look at me getting all "developer-y" and serious in a post, without smileys even... can't have that.  :P

 :read: :two:

mouser:
Have i looked at drupal?  

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=8030.0

I've used drupal on several projects now, and found it consistently unintuitive, confusing, and unpleasant.

It is powerful and extremely flexible, and has a nice modular design, and has a library of books about it (which i love), but it is big and alien.

If you are a coder who needs to develop a custom project that is first and foremost a CMS, Drupal may still be the right choice.  It does a good job of supporting modular non-invasive extensions.

But I was very unhappy with trying to use Drupal as the base of a project which was not really a CMS.  It *looks* like it might be a good foundation for generic projects that have user accounts, etc -- but i found it deeply frustrating.

And especially after having gone back to basics with a lightweight framework like yii, I can say it is immeasurably more enjoyable to build code on top of a more lean and minimalist foundation, rather than trying to find your way through the convolutions of something like Drupal.

It's really an age-old problem for programmers, whether it's better to rewrite your own version of some code or use an existing codebase.  Drupal has a ton of code that can be appealing in terms of letting you start off with most of the code you need already in place.  But as someone who has often leaned in that direction, I'm remembering now nice it is to write it yourself and really understand the code well, and not have so much stuff in there that has nothing to do with your needs.

justice:
Sometimes what you need is a framework that makes it quicker to get to that point where you have a custom solution. I couldn't imagine starting a new PHP project from scratch without frameworks (CodeIgniter in my case)

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