Yii - Application Structure

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There is only one folder in the overall code base that is publicly available for the web server. It is the web directory. Other folders outside the web root directory are out of reach for the web server.

Note − All project dependencies are located in the composer.json file. Yii2 has a few important packages that are already included in your project by Composer. These packages are the following −

  • Gii – The code generator tool
  • The debug console
  • The Codeception testing framework
  • The SwiftMailer library
  • The Twitter Bootstrap UI library

The first three packages are only useful in the development environment.

Yii2's application structure is precise and clear. It contains the following folders −

  • Assets − This folder includes all .js and .css files referenced in the web page.

  • Commands − This folder includes the controllers that can be used from the terminal.

  • Config − This folder contains config files for managing database, application and application parameters.

  • Mail − This folder includes the mail layout.

  • Models − This folder includes the models used in the application.

  • Runtime − This folder is for storing runtime data.

  • Tests − This folder includes all the tests (acceptance, unit, functional).

  • Vendor − This folder contains all the third-party packages managed by Composer.

  • Views − This folder is for views, that are displayed by the controllers. The layout folder is a for page template.

  • Web − The entry point from web.

Application Structure

Following is the diagrammatic representation of the application structure.

Application Structure

Yii2 – Objects

The following list contains all Yii2's objects −

Models, Views, and Controllers

Models are for data representation (usually from the database). View are for displaying the data. Controllers are for processing requests and generating responses.

Components

To create a reusable functionality, the user can write his own components. Components are just objects that contain logic. For example, a component could be a weight converter.

Application components

These are objects that instanced just one time in the whole application. The main difference between Components and Application components is that the latter can have only one instance in the whole application.

Widgets

Widgets are reusable objects containing both logic and rendering code. A widget could be, for example, a gallery slider.

Filters

Filters are objects that run before or after the execution of the Controller actions.

Modules

You can consider Modules as reusable subapps, containing Models, Views, Controllers, and so forth.

Extensions

Extensions are packages that can be managed by the Composer.

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