Yii 2 Extended Project Template

Yii 2 Extended Project Template is a skeleton for Yii 2 application best for creating small and medium size projects.

The template is based on Official Yii 2 Basic Project Template and contains the basic features including user login/logout and a contact page. In addition to yii2-app-basic it handles environment-specific config files and simplify adding custom file headers or @author phpdoc.

DIRECTORY STRUCTURE

  app/assets/         contains assets definition
  app/commands/       contains console commands (controllers)
  app/controllers/    contains Web controller classes
  app/mail/           contains view files for e-mails
  app/models/         contains model classes
  app/views/          contains view files for the Web application
  app/widgets/        contains widgets classes
  config/             contains application configurations
  public/             contains the entry script and Web resources
  resources/          contains non-PHP resources
  runtime/            contains files generated during runtime
  tests/              contains various tests for the application
  vendor/             contains dependent 3rd-party packages

REQUIREMENTS

The minimum requirement by this project template that your Web server supports PHP 7.1.0.

INSTALLATION

Install via Composer

The preferred way to install this template is through Composer. If you do not have it, you may install it by following the instructions at getcomposer.org.

You can then install this project template using the following command:

composer create-project --prefer-dist rob006/yii2-app-extended application

Now you should be able to access the application through the following URL, assuming application is the directory directly under the Web root.

http://localhost/application/public/

Install with Docker

Update your vendor packages

docker-compose run --rm php composer update --prefer-dist

Run the installation triggers (creating cookie validation code)

docker-compose run --rm php composer install    

Start the container

docker-compose up -d

You can then access the application through the following URL:

http://127.0.0.1:8000

NOTES:

• Minimum required Docker engine version 17.04 for development (see Performance tuning for volume mounts)
• The default configuration uses a host-volume in your home directory .docker-composer for composer caches

Postinstallation setup

After installation you should perform some steps to customize the project to your needs:

1. Replace /* {licenseheader} */ phrase from all php files in your project with your custom file header. You could also remove it if you don't want file headers in your project.

2. Replace {author} phrase from all php files in your project with your name and email (for example John Doe <john@example.com>) - this will set @author tag in phpdoc of all existing classes in the project.

3. Adjust composer.json file with your project settings.

4. Add LICENSE file with your project license to the root of the project.

CONFIGURATION

Environment-specific config files

Template supports configuration specific for specified environment. For example config/1-web.php contains configuration overrides for web app and config/2-prod.php configuration for production environment. This allows you to avoid configuration duplication by creating more general configuration an override it for specified environment. For example, for web application in prod environment app reads and merge configuration in the following order (see ArrayHelper::merge() for more details):

1. config/0-main.php.
2. config/1-web.php.
3. config/2-prod.php.
4. config/3-local.php.

By default 2 types of environments are handled:

1. dev - used by developer on app development. By default it contains some tools useful during development, like Debug toolbar or Gii.
2. prod - production environment.

But you can easily add new environment by creating specified file in config directory.

More about environments you can find on Wiki.

Environment settings are stored in config/env-local.php (file is created during composer install from config/env-local.php template). You can switch environment by editing this file (it is ignored by VCS, so environment settings are specific for local installation). Default environment is dev - make sure that you switch this to prod on production deployment.

Local config files

Usually each application has some configuration that should not be shared between different installations and should not be stored in version control system, for example personal keys or configuration specific for a particular server. In config directory you can find a set of config files prefixed by -local.php - these files are designed for storing such a configuration. These local configs are added to .gitignore and never will be pushed to source code repository, so you can safely use it to override some general config. You can use config/3-local.php to override some general config.

In config/templates directory you can find templates for local config files. On first run composer install these files will be copied to config directory. You can edit these templates to adjust default content of local config files, but you should not store any private data in templates - these should be put into config/*-local.php files after installation.

Database

Edit the file config/db-local.php with real data, for example:

return [
    'class' => yii\db\Connection::class,
    'dsn' => 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=yii2app',
    'username' => 'root',
    'password' => '1234',
    'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
];

Yii won't create the database for you, this has to be done manually before you can access it.

TESTING

Tests are located in tests directory. They are developed with Codeception PHP Testing Framework. By default there are 3 test suites:

• unit
• functional
• acceptance

Tests can be executed by running

vendor/bin/codecept run

The command above will execute unit and functional tests. Unit tests are testing the system components, while functional tests are for testing user interaction. Acceptance tests are disabled by default as they require additional setup since they perform testing in real browser.

Running acceptance tests

To execute acceptance tests do the following:

1. Rename tests/acceptance.suite.yml.example to tests/acceptance.suite.yml to enable suite configuration

2. Update dependencies with Composer

   composer update

3. Download Selenium Server and launch it:

   java -jar ~/selenium-server-standalone-x.xx.x.jar

   In case of using Selenium Server 3.0 with Firefox browser since v48 or Google Chrome since v53 you must download GeckoDriver or ChromeDriver and launch Selenium with it:

   # for Firefox
   java -jar -Dwebdriver.gecko.driver=~/geckodriver ~/selenium-server-standalone-3.xx.x.jar
   
   # for Google Chrome
   java -jar -Dwebdriver.chrome.driver=~/chromedriver ~/selenium-server-standalone-3.xx.x.jar
   

   As an alternative way you can use already configured Docker container with older versions of Selenium and Firefox:

   docker run --net=host selenium/standalone-firefox:2.53.0
   

4. (Optional) Create yii2_app_tests database and update it by applying migrations if you have them.

   tests/bin/yii migrate
   

   The database configuration can be found at tests/config/db-local.php.

5. Start web server:

   tests/bin/yii serve

6. Now you can run all available tests

   # run all available tests
   vendor/bin/codecept run
   
   # run acceptance tests
   vendor/bin/codecept run acceptance
   
   # run only unit and functional tests
   vendor/bin/codecept run unit,functional

Code coverage support

By default, code coverage is disabled in codeception.yml configuration file, you should uncomment needed rows to be able to collect code coverage. You can run your tests and collect coverage with the following command:

# collect coverage for all tests
vendor/bin/codecept run -- --coverage-html --coverage-xml

# collect coverage only for unit tests
vendor/bin/codecept run unit -- --coverage-html --coverage-xml

# collect coverage for unit and functional tests
vendor/bin/codecept run functional,unit -- --coverage-html --coverage-xml

You can see code coverage output under the tests/_output directory.