As previously said I replied to the request of Jitesh looking for reviewers for the book Yii1.1 Development Cookbook and I have to admit that it is my first ‘official review’ for Packt. Main details about the book are:
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Application Development Cookbook_Frontcover
Title:
Yii-11-Application-Development-Cookbook (Click here to get a sample of the book)
Pages : 392
Author: Alexander Makarov
Published by: PACKT Publishing
Total of chapters: 13
Since I have a project on which I can ‘test’ what was in the book, I did not read from top to down. In the preface you are warned 🙂 about what you need, which topics the book is covering and tools needed to test the recipes.
The book offers recipes grouped in 13 chapters as I said. I personally grouped them in four (4) categories
User interface
Chapter 3, AJAX and jQuery : you read about how to combine Yii with Jquery and Ajax
Chapter 7, Using Zii Components shows tips related to grids (how to customize them), sorting, lists, search, etc.
Data management
Chapter 4, Working with Forms: Work on your own validators, captcha, uploading files and get use to Cwidget.
Chapter 6, Database, Active Record, and Model Tricks is about all you need to know to work efficiently with models and/or databases.
Testing and Error handling
Chapter 5, Testing Your Application for using Yii with the agile methodology (unit testing, fixtures, etc.).
Chapter 9, Error Handling, Debugging, and Logging reviews good tips to know to handle better errors before and once the project is launched.
Miscellaneous
Chapter 1, Under the Hood start the adventure by learning hidden secrets about Yii. You should be surprised by what you read here; I at least was.
Chapter 2, Router, Controller, and Views guides you on the path of understanding how Routing, controller and Views work.
Chapter 8, Extending Yii: you want to create your own extension, ok but how to do it in the professional way? Do take a look at this chapter.
Chapter 10, Security : avoid being part of the most wanted “crappy developers” by learning here how to prevent XSS, CSRF, etc. You can read also here about role-based access control.
Chapter 12, Using External Code : You like or need to use “Zend Framework”, “Kohana”, and “PEAR” ? Great after reading this chapter you should be happy.
After coding
Chapter 11, Performance Tuning All about best practices to have a “fast” application unless your aim to have users sleeping after clicking on a menu link :-).
Chapter 13, Deployment: being professional includes working properly in a team and have the project launched in a proper way. You will learn or review cool things here.
Pros
– You can go straight to the point; you do not have to read one chapter after another before understanding what to do
– Screenshots
– Through out the whole book, the same ‘way’ of presenting the content (How to do it… How it works… There’s more… and See also ) allows to quickly based on the title, identify the exact step you want to work on. You also have a section “Getting ready” telling you ho to set up the testing environment.
Cons
I spent days looking in vain for something to put here not because I know the author 🙂 (I wish I do) but because all I was looking for was in the book. Maybe by the end of my project I will have cons to post J.
Conclusion
The current version of the book is big enough to expect it to have all details about Yii. I want to thank Jitesh and Packt for this opportunity; I had fun doing this. I wish this is not my last review 🙂
More details about the book here : http://link.packtpub.com/SOv7Qs
A sample chapter is available here for your preview , which your can download for free.
4 Comments
Awesome review. I have not read the book, but have been working with Yii for over a year. We have been working on a new open source CRM project that is written in PHP utilizing JQuery, Yii, and RedBeanPHP and relies heavily on test driven development. It might be one of the most complex projects on Yii to date. Might be interesting for you.
http://zurmo.org
Wow of coure I am interested 🙂 I have clicked on download before even reading the features :-). I’ll be following you even if I can’t contribute a lot right now ( busy right now) but I can help for translation (french) if needed.
Thank you so much for taking a look. If you want to install, here is a helpful link:
http://zurmo.org/wiki/installation-instructions-for-production
I noticed that you created a Forums user, which is good because there is an Installation and Setup section. If you have any issues, you can submit a Forum post and we will assist.
http://zurmo.org/forums/index.php?/forum/8-installation-and-setup/
It’s interesting that you mention French translation because we are almost done (we could have used you 2 months ago…..). Once it is live, it would be great to have you QA it and see if our French translator did a good job. We are almost done with Spanish and will be doing Italian and Portuguese next. Let me know how the install goes.
Thanks,
Ray
Thank you so much for taking a look. If you want to install, here is a helpful link:http://zurmo.org/wiki/installation-instructions-for-production.
I noticed that you created a Forums user, which is good because there is an Installation and Setup section. It’s interesting that you mention French translation because we completed it a month ago. It would be great to have you QA it and see if our French translator did a good job. We have completed German and Spanish. Let me know how the install goes.
Thanks,
Ray