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Getting Started with Yii2: Part 1 - Installation

Welcome to the first part of our getting started tutorial for web application development using Yii2, a popular PHP framework. In this post, we'll guide you through the installation process and set up your local development environment. Let's get started!

Prerequisites

Before we dive into the Yii2 installation, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

  1. PHP: Ensure you have a stable version of PHP installed on your system (preferably PHP 7.3 or higher). You can download PHP from the official website.
  2. Composer: Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. Install it by following the instructions provided in the official documentation.
  3. Web Server (Apache or Nginx): Your system should have a web server installed to run PHP files. Instructions for installing Apache and Nginx can be found on their respective websites: Apache and Nginx.
  4. Database Server (MySQL or MariaDB): Yii2 supports both MySQL and MariaDB as database management systems. Install it following the instructions provided on their official websites: MySQL and MariaDB.

Installing Yii2

Now that we have our prerequisites installed, let's proceed with the installation of Yii2:

  1. Create a new project: Open your terminal or command prompt and create a new directory for your Yii2 project using mkdir myProject. Next, navigate to the project folder by typing cd myProject.

  2. Initialize Composer: Initialize a new Composer project by creating a composer.json file with the following content:

{
    "require": {
        "yiisoft/yii2-bootstrap": "*",
        "yiisoft/yii": "*"
    }
}

Now, run composer install to install the required dependencies.

  1. Set up your web server: Create a new configuration file named web.php inside the config directory with the following content:
return [
    'baseUrl' => '/your-project-name', // Replace with your project name
];

Update the virtual host or server block in your web server configuration file to point to this new web.php file.

  1. Configure your database: Open the config/db.php file and set up your database connection details:
return [
    'class' => 'yii\db\Connection',
    'dsn' => 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=your-database-name', // Replace with your database name
    'username' => 'your-database-user', // Replace with your database user
    'password' => 'your-database-password', // Replace with your database password
];
  1. Initialize Yii2: Create an index.php file at the root of your project directory:
<?php
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
require __DIR__ . '/config/web.php';

use yii\BootstrapApplication;

$application = new BootstrapApplication(require __DIR__ . '/config/web.php');

$application->run();

Now, you should be able to access your Yii2 project in your web browser by visiting http://localhost/your-project-name.

In the next part of our tutorial, we'll explore the Yii2 framework further and build a simple application. Stay tuned!

Published July, 2017