PHP is a programming language that focuses on building highly-intuitive and attractive web development. It has many frameworks that help developers to construct the project rapidly. The frameworks are as follows:
- CodeIgniter
- Laravel
- Symfony
- Drupal
- Yii
- Zend
- Phalcon
Today, we are going to understand the similarities and differences of the two significant frameworks from the above-given list, i.e., Laravel vs Yii. Since Laravel has been discussed many times, I’ll directly jump to Yii and its features. But, you can go through Laravel’s features from another article.
What is Yii?
Yii is an open-source and component-based PHP web app framework. It follows the model-view-controller (MVC) architectural pattern. It follows the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) concept that writes a logical code base.
There are amazing features of Yii. Let’s have a look at them:
- Extensibility
- CRUD features
- Increase in Throughput ratio
- Effective Handling Errors
- Easy Installation
Many SaaS apps are built using Yii which are as follows:
- Medialoot.com
- Craftcms.com
- Viget.com
- Straightupcraft.com
- Plugin.krajee.com
You have seen how both the frameworks are potentially good in the respective fields of development. Now, let’s see the benefits and pitfalls between Yii vs Laravel:
Benefits of Yii:
- Ideal Option: Builds Rapid Development with CRUD operations
- DRY rule: It follows DRY rules which means “Don’t Repeat Yourself.” It helps in structuring the codebase.
- Widgets: In-built widgets to process data at a much faster pace with the support of AJAX
- Extensible: Build tailor-made code and alter tiny pieces
- Performance: Improves the performance of the project & reduces time in development.
- Community: There is a wide community that supports sharing their insights and ideas.
Pitfalls of Yii:
- Features: It requires Javascript support to make the feature workable.
- Queries: There is no support for augmented reality queries or other relational queries.
- Dependency: The app professionals have to go against the framework and also have to depend on a static method.
- Prior-Knowledge:App experts should have a basic knowledge of PHP programming which makes it easy for them to understand and learn.
Laravel vs Yii: A Parameter-Based Comparison
Let’s have a look at major differences between Yii vs Laravel:
Criterion #1: Validation
Laravel: Form validation helps app professionals to lead the battle of Yii vs Laravel as it allows them to verify the validations at any point of time. Unification is also possible as laravel has got the support of object-relational mapping (ORM). Moreover, numerous validations can help app professionals to choose, depending on the purpose.
Yii: The form validation tasks consume a lot of time in the case of Yii as compared to Laravel because of the restriction over the validation/verification of the data. Also, you can leverage Yii for allocating a model from the parameter requested. You can customize the code as per your requirement.
Criterion #2: Extensions
Laravel: Laravel is one step ahead in the battle of Laravel vs Yii. It has approximately 9K extensions that professional experts can choose from for developing highly-intuitive web apps.
Yii: If you see the extensions offered by the Yii as compared to Laravel, then it is around ¼ of what laravel offers, i.e., 2.8K.
Criterion #3: Documentation
Laravel: The unorganized documentation doesn’t deliver accurate information, hence developers fails to undersatnd it. As a result, any novice would not prefer it and then there will be less support to the framework.
Yii: Yii wins the battle of Laravel vs. Yii in terms of documentation as it has very sorted documentation, which is will be understandable even by the beginners.
Criterion #4: CRUD Generation
Laravel: Laravel again falls short in the battle of Yii vs Laravel. Laravel has No additional support for CRUD functionality.
Yii: Yii2 has a separate module for rapid code generation. The handy tool which provides prototyping by generating code snippets & CRUD controllers is known as Gii.
Criterion #5: Resilience & Strength
Laravel: It can handle everything virtually. The command-line tool, which is known as artisan’s tool, can help professionals to generate skeleton code, which results in offering from migration to configuration management.
Yii: Yii comes with rich features of PHP, such as late static binding, SPL classes, and enticing interfaces that are possible because of being an OOP framework. Yii uses Gii extensions that can create template code extensions, controllers, and models in a stipulated time period.
Criterion #6: Security
Laravel: It becomes an arduous task for the expert Laravel developers to make available the accessing tools as the developers have to utilize the extensions. You can easily connect with any Laravel Development Company and achieve secure solutions.
Yii: Yii is one step ahead in the battle of Laravel vs Yii as it has Built-in role-based control. It offers authentication, password, SQL injections, Site scripting, Cross-Site Forgery Request, and many more things.
Criterion #7: Learning Curve
Laravel: If we talk about the learning curve of Laravel, then it is quite steep as any newbie would surely face difficulty while learning this framework. It has slow speed in response communication as well as on-time data collection. You can say that the learning curve advantage ball is in Yii’s court, which states that it wins the Laravel vs. Yii battle.
Yii: Yii is preferred by most of the developers across the globe. It is simple to learn and understand and can develop any mobile as well as web-apps. Any developer can learn coding easily by going through the documents of Yii.
Also Read : Laravel vs Lumen: Which One Is Better For You?
Criterion #8: Debugging
Laravel: When it comes to debugging, Laravel beats Yii as it has various options like Logging and Imho. Imho turns out to be a boon for the developers as it solves issues of Laravel-debug bar extension.
Yii: It has an in-built comprehensive debugging console for processing database requests. There is a debugging console as a third-party extension.
Criterion #9: Migration
Laravel: It offers a seeder that delivers smooth transfer of data/information, and is also helpful in performing robust testing over modules. Also, it offers a data seeding option as Yii does.
Yii: Yii offers everything that Laravel does and additionally, it is capable of generating fixtures that can be utilized to seed the information.
Criterion #10: Community Support
Laravel: It has quite a good number of app professionals who are brainstorming and going above and beyond to deliver quality results. It has a large number of professionals globally.
Yii: It is quite older than Laravel, and it has more developers across the globe. Everyone is contributing their insights and knowledge.
Criterion #11: Testing
Laravel: Symfony testing tools such as DomCrawler, Httpkernel, and Browserkit tests every module. It performs robust testing, detects, and debugs the glitches as well as system non-performance.
Yii: Yii is quite far away from Laravel as well as from the battle of Laravel Vs. Yii, as it has numerous testing tools, which are more as compared to PHP and codeception.
Which one to choose: Laravel vs. Yii?
The question, “which is best for web-app development” depends on the requirement of the project and so, it would not be fair to answer it. Well, you know Laravel offers quite amazing features such as Templating engines, numerous extensions, robust testing practices, and many more things.
On the other hand, Yii offers extensive and potential benefits that will help laravel developers for hire so that they can construct artistic web-apps.
If you have an idea and want to build an app, then connect with one of the trustworthy Laravel Application Development Companies to witness your ideas unfolding on to the virtual platform.