Yii 2 Starter Application Template

Yii 2 Starter Application Template is a skeleton Yii 2 application best for rapidly creating small to medium sized projects.

It is built upon the official Yii 2 Basic Application Template but provides two separate applications, for the frontend and the backend. Unlike in the Yii 2 Advanced Application Template, here the two apps share the same webroot, and are accessed using different entry scripts.

The template contains basic backend functionality such as password reset, administrator and user management.

The backend is built upon the AdminLTE theme.

DIRECTORY STRUCTURE

  assets/             contains assets definition
  commands/           contains console commands (controllers)
  config/             contains application configurations
  controllers/        contains Web controller classes
  gii/                contains code generator templates
  install/            contains the post-installation script
  mail/               contains view files for e-mails
  messages/           contains the translation files
  migrations/         contains the database migrations
  models/             contains model classes
  runtime/            contains files generated during runtime
  tests/              contains various tests for the basic application
  vendor/             contains dependent 3rd-party packages
  views/              contains view files for the Web application
  web/                contains the entry scripts (index.php and back.php) and Web resources
    assets/           directory for the auto-published yii assets
    files/            directory for user uploads

REQUIREMENTS

The minimum requirement by this application template that your Web server supports PHP 5.4.0.

INSTALLATION

Install via Composer

If you do not have Composer, you may install it by following the instructions at getcomposer.org.

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

composer global require "fxp/composer-asset-plugin:~1.1.1"
composer create-project --prefer-dist --stability=dev guillemc/yii2starter myapp

CONFIGURATION

Filesystem permissions

The webserver needs write access to the runtime, web/assets and web/files directories. The install script can attempt to do this, but in a pretty harcoded way (using setfacl commands and assuming an apache www-data user).

Database

This project assumes that a mysql database will be used. It must be created beforehand.

Environment configuration

Open the file .env.php from the root directory and customize the environment variables, as well as the database connection details. This file can also be used to store any sensitive information that must not end up in the repository, such as api keys, passwords, etc.

Edit the files in the config/ directory and customize your application (name, language, timezone...).

Apply migration

Run ./yii migrate from the console. This will create the administrators table (with the root administration user admin with password admin) and the users table.

Application URLs

If installed inside your webserver's document root, the frontend will be available at http://localhost/myapp/web/ and the backend at http://localhost/myapp/web/back.php. In production it is recommended that you set a virtual host for your application that points to the web directory, so that the access urls become http://myapp.com/ and http://myapp.com/back.php.