Dear community members,
I’m hoping one of you will be able to help me with what I’m trying to achieve.
I’ll try to keep this as short as possible, but at the same time I want to give you as much info as possible so you understand what I’m after, and hopefully put me in the right direction. Apologies in advance for my "ignorance" and the length of this message (as I know it may be a bit long by the time I explain myself).
I have a web-based system which already has a MySQL database. I’m planning to build some custom made forms with CRUD functionalities to manage some of the tables from that same database as well as add other tables (and/or fields to existing tables) and use my web-based forms to do the CRUD operations on those tables. In other words, I want to complement the data we have in that system using custom made web based forms.
I haven’t done any programming in the last 5 years (or more) so instead of trying to “reinvent the wheel”, I started researching to see if I can find a good PHP/apache based platform (preferably open source) to get familiarised with and start creating the required forms. I have no previous PHP experience but wanted to go that way as it’s open source and I want to learn the MVC pattern as well.
That’s when I found the Yii framework which seemed interesting, also the fact that it came with its code generator Gii made it more appealing to me. I built a linux VM (ubuntu 12.10) and did all the needed installs and configs (apache2, php, mysql, yii framework) and started trialling the generators using Gii. To be honest, it’s even easier than I thought it would be. Then I realised the Gii CRUD generator is not enough for tables that have relationships with other tables, and that’s when I came across the Giix extension by Rodrigo Coelho (http://www.yiiframework.com/extension/giix) as well as his wiki article (the complete beginner’s study guide for the Yii Framework). I’ve also gone through most of this forum threads related to Giix.
Now, my question is whether you can provide me with either a step-by-step guide or an example on how to build and use the CRUD forms generated by Giix, as I couldn’t find much on the Internet (other than the forum threads) and whatever I do, I’m always getting a PHP warning (failed to open stream: no such file or directory) when I try to access the generated forms. Based on some answers some of you provided to other users through the forum, I’m guessing it may be an issue with the database (foreign keys and so on) but I don’t know what needs to be done as I need guidance (as a real beginner).
I’ve come across an article where the author is saying we may need to modify the templates to adapt the result of php files generated in: /protected/extensions/giix-core/giixCrud/templates/default. I didn’t quite get this and don’t know if this is the reason I’m always getting those warnings.
I’ve followed al the instructions and can confirm the extension is working as I can see the two generators (GiixCrud Generator and GiixModel Generator) and can generate the model and CRUD without any error messages. It’s when I try to access the generated page that I am getting the php warning and am stuck there. I believe this is due to my “ignorance” when it comes to PHP and the MVC pattern and need some guidance from the community.
Any help and guidance is truly and greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance.
Kevork