This is just a memo for future self of what steps must be undertaken in order to:
If you’re familiar with the above then you won’t find anything valuable in this article, sorry.
Read More “Adding custom action to yii\rest\ActiveController”After writing the previous article I have realized that I solved the problem quite wrong. I added the example RESTful app controller to the frontend application in the multi-application Yii 2 Advanced Project Template environment.
I have also realized that the corresponding Yii 2 Guide is very, very poor and limited. It only tells you that you can have many applications (like backend, fronted and console) in the multi-application Yii 2 Advanced Project Template environment. But it leaves you completely guessing on how to actually add new application.
This quick article is my memo to remember steps that must be undertaken in order to achieve this.
Read More “Adding new application to Yii 2 Advanced Project Template”The example given in Yii 2 Guide is of a low quality, because it It requires User model based on database, not a file. And the guide mixes two things together:
As an effect, people who just starts their journey with Yii 2 and REST are often confused and finds official example not working in their side.
This article deals with this problem and show how to enable REST in Yii 2 Basic Project Template by using some model (database-based) other than User model.
Read More “The quickest way to add RestAPI to your Yii 2 app. Part 1”When developing web applications in PHP based on Yii 2’s Advanced Project Template you have a clear separation between two applications:
There’s also a separate console application but it isn’t important from web applications perspective as it is not accessed remotely via URL, but rather locally in console.
In local development environment you can separate access to these two applications using various methods:
This article deals with all three scenarios, but using XAMPP/Apache for Windows only. You must adjust provided examples, if you’re running Apache on different operating system.
Read More “Configure virtual hosts for separated apps in Advanced Project Template”If you need a typical primary key then use $this->primaryKey() in your migration file. You can also use something like $this->primaryKey(2), if you need a bigger (here int(2)) primary key.
But, what when you need a non-standard primary key, i.e. you want to turn following example SQL code:
CREATE TABLE `country` ( `code` CHAR(2) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, `name` CHAR(52) NOT NULL, `population` INT(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0' ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;
into Yii 2 migration?
Calling:
'code' => $this->primaryKey()->char(2)->notNull()
will fail with error:
Exception: Calling unknown method: yii\db\mysql\ColumnSchemaBuilder::char()
Now, what Qiang?
Read More “Create a non-standard primary key in Yii 2 migration”This is just a barely memo about very, very basics of curl. Since curl fetches URLs and data from some endpoints, it can be used for a variety of reasons. I am using to for a very basic (and quick!) API calls tests.
If you’re on Linux, Unix or any of its clones or if you’re on Mac then you most likely have curl. If you’re on Windows, but you’re using Git for Windows (or some similar tool) then you have curl.
So, let’s jump into that basics. Be warned — you will not find here anything that you wouldn’t already knew.
Read More “Introduction to curl”The quickest way of adding REST support to your Yii 2 application is to add REST controller to it and configure REST rules. Just a couple of line and framework will do all the dirty stuff for you “behind the scene”.
If you do this then your REST rules will have pluralize property set to true be default meaning that even though you are using controller’s name in singular (i.e. UserController, PostController etc.) your REST URL rules will have it in plural, i.e. GET /posts/12, DELETE /posts/13 etc.
Since I am a purification and perfection maniac, I wasn’t pretty much satisfied with the idea that:
pluralize = true) or GET /post router when fetching all records (when pluralize = false)In other words, I wanted a solution that will give me:
GET /post/12, PATCH /post/77)GET /posts)The solution turned out to be quite simple…
Read More “Pluralized and non-pluralized rules for the same REST controller”Watch out for relative file paths. When using them in any action, files lands in a folder (from that relative path) in root directory folder (where they’re is expected, at least according to me). But, when you use the very same path in a migration, then files will land in a folder in protected folder. I have just found this to my surprise.
To “fix” this, you need to add:
[php]dirname(__FILE__).’/../../’.[/php]
in front of your relative path (which makes it no longer relative, though).
Details on Yii forum.
CListView widget is a great piece of code for quickly rendering lists of items that:
However, they lack support for rendering items in more than one column. This article shows one of many workarounds to fix this problem.
Read More “Multi-column CListView”When using matchCallback in AccessControlFilter in Yii2, an attempt to read $action->controller->actionParams or Yii::$app->controller->actionParams inside this callback fails, because these attributes are empty.
This is by design, because AccessControlFilter is executed at an earlier stage than parameters binding.
If you need to read action parameters inside matchCallback (for example to judge, if user has access to particular action, basing on action’s parameters) then the only way is to read them from Yii::$app->request->get(). More details here or here.
The simplest and easiest way of rendering DetailView is to declare model and attributes list. This will renders each listed model’s attribute in a cool-looking, responsive table.
This article contains examples and solutions for going a little bit beyond that and using DetailView in a little bit more advanced way.
This article shows, how to use rule classes with yii\web\UrlManager to implement URL aliases-based routing system quickly and easily. It shows a bit different approach to this topic (static routing).
For one of my projects I needed an interactive console command in Yii 1, i.e. the one that is gathering all information from user in an interactive mode (a serie of questions and answers displayed directly in the console), ignoring command-line arguments at all.
This is an example (or rather a bare foundation, as this actually is doing nothing) of such solution. It has some console text formatting methods (borders, text alignment) plus simple method for gathering user response.
I needed some nifty solution in Yii2 that would allow me to delete an image (a file) no matter, if:
Here it is.
Read More “Get file’s local path from its URL”This guide shows, how to (in Yii2) render checkbox list with correctly selected items (preselected during form render), using both HTML helper classes and active form approach.
This is an extended version of this Stack Overflow question and an answer following it, plus some additional information from me and from other sources.
Read More “Render checkbox list with initially checked items in Yii2”There’s a great answer at Stack Overflow that shows, how in Yii2 you can implement a form containing listbox and two input fields. Listbox contains data from one model and when user selects any option, remaining two input fields should be populated with relevant values from related model.
I wrote an extended version of this code. It populates two other listboxes instead of just input fields. And it uses a little bit less deprecated code! :>
Read More “Chained, AJAX-updated listboxes in Yii2”Here is a quick guide on how to add, in Yii2, a custom button to GridView’s ActionColumn, with standard or with customised URL.
Read More “Adding custom button to grid view in Yii2”You can’t use Yii::t() method inside Yii2 application’s configuration, right?
I mean… you can use it (application won’t fail), but you will always get string passed as method’s param in return, instead of actual translation, no matter, what language is currently set in your application.
This makes “How to translate application title (or any other configuration parameter)” a quite good question.
Read More “Changing Yii2 application’s configuration at runtime”Since there’s a pure Linux underlying PHP, you can use STDIN (actually: php://stdin) and read it with fopen when your PHP script is run in console to stop execution of your script and read a button user pressed.
Since Yii migrations are run in console, you can use this mechanism to ask user whether she or he want to continue with your database migration.
Quite handy in some scenarios (like: destroying entire database), don’t you think?
Read More “Migration that requires user confirmation to continue”Yii Framework 1.x migration system is very powerful and gives you much more power and control over database update process. But it becomes a horrible nightmare, if you have to deal with .sql files and convert them into Yii migration files manually.
This article should help you in that strike or at least ease your work.
If you have any doubts, why the hell migrations are better than using plan .sql files then this blog post should provide you with at least some reasons.
Read More “Converting database structure or .sql file into Yii migration”There’s a wonderful extension to Yii 1.x, called database-command, written by the one and only schmunk, which allows you to quickly and easily generate any set of CDbMigrationCommands (actually, entire single migration code) based on current database schema.
This isn’t, of course, the only one out there. There are some others. But I like this one the most, mainly for flexibility (may parameters to suit generated migration file to your needs). However, if this is your first approach to using custom yiic commands, you may get a little bit confused. This article should help you.
If you have never been using Yii 1.x database migrations before, you may be sceptic (as I was before starting to using them), if they’re so good? And whether it is worth to waste time on dumping database scheme or rewriting .sql files into Yii migrations.
This document outlines most important pros of using Yii migration system.
Read More “Why to use Yii migrations instead of plain SQL files?”Layouts in Yii 1.x may be a little bit mistery to someone, who never worked with some layout framework.
This article tries to explain basics to such people.
If you’re new to Yii migrations, these sources might be a help for you:
How to create initial migration basing on current database state, explains this Stack Overflow question and GitHub Gist (with InitialDbMigrationCommand class’ code) to support it.
To use migrations, you have to properly configure console version of your Yii application. Details follows.
Read More “An introduction to database migrations in Yii”I don’t like the idea of rewriting my entire application’s view to use new Bootstrap 3, so my Yii apps remain on Bootstrap 2, served by YiiBooster extension. The biggest problem, I find in it is that its controls have prepends somehow “built-in”.
Both field and its prepend is rendered with one line of code. So, when you want to replace any YiiBooster’s control with for example own widget / library, you always remove one line, but looses both field and prepend.
I found ugly and nasty workaround for this.