[Fred Anthony]

I want to start off by stating that I am totally new to Yii, I've used several other "frameworks" in the past and I've been reading a lot on Yii lately. I'm thinking of using Yii for my next project but after going through some of the documentation I'm still a little fuzzy on a few things.

I'm starting off with integrating Smarty, I've used it in the past and I have a lot of code written that saves me time when generating forms etc. I've looked through what I could find on the net and I see 3 different ways of doing this. Now I'm not referring to the code really, that I understand, but where is the proper place to add these extensions?

Do I create a ViewRenderer under framework/web/renderers? Do I place it in my application protected folder? My concern is when it comes time to upgrade Yii I don't want to be comparing files in the framework folder. In Kohana
(love hate) I would have created a module and placed all files there outside of the "framework" folder. Also, when the documentation refers to the application folder, is this the folder for my project I created? Thanks again.

Fred.

[bluyell]

at first place, you -must- understand Yii more deeply (not so much, but sufficient), try out demos and the fundamentals of using models, views, controllers and its actions, forms, etc. Is very basic, but powerfull.

[Fred Anthony]

bluyell,

Thanks for the response. I have familiarized myself with much of the documentation and code base via the API documentation. I was asking more of where I place extension for such things as a ViewRenderer so that my code base is upgrade safe and as efficient as possible.

[jacmoe]

It depends.

I usually put custom components in 'components', but if I create an extension (which is basically a collection of files instead), I put them in 'extensions'.
If it is a widget, it usually goes in 'widgets' - unless, of course, that widget is an extension..
In which case it would go in 'extensions'.

There is not really a lot of rules here.

So, how do you get started, then?

I started by downloading and looking at various extension, so I suggest that you do the same.

[Fred Anthony]

jacmoe,

I think I'll go with with sticking the customer renderer in my "application" folder, protected/extensions/renderers. Thanks for the tips.

[bluyell]

Fred Anthony, on 26 April 2012 - 01:11 PM, said:

bluyell,

Thanks for the response. I have familiarized myself with much of the documentation and code base via the API documentation. I was asking more of where I place extension for such things as a ViewRenderer so that my code base is upgrade safe and as efficient as possible.

under protected/components folder, and, if need more organization on it ( components/mycomponent/mysubfolder1/etc ) then you need to tell Yii that this folders will be loaded too, this is done in protected/config/main.php:


(file: protected/config/main.php)

'import'=>array(
'application.models.*',
'application.models.design.*',
'application.components.*', // this will load and import all files under components folder,
'application.components.mycomponentfolder.*', // and this, will load an example sub folder, if you wish...
),