Following up on their previous look at the component architecture of the Yii framework, PHPMaster has posted this new tutorial showing how the framework allows you to do some event-based programming.

An application event is something that occurs which might be of interest to other bits of code. A standard event in most GUI applications would be a "click" event, but the sky's the limit and what events you define is really up to you. [...] The details can be provided by application-specific modules allowing you to keep individual requirements separate from your reusable code. Events allow you to attach a potentially unlimited amount of functionality without changing your core modules and components.

In his example, he shows how to create an event handler that is triggered when the user registers on the site. This event (CEvent) is then registered with the system and is attached via a call in the controller's "init" method.

On PHPMaster.com today Steven O'Brien takes a look at a popular PHP-based framework, Yii - specifically one of the components that makes it up, the CComponent that provides a base for all other components in the framework.

There's been a lot of buzz surrounding the use of frameworks for quite a while now and there are many great PHP frameworks to choose from. I was blown away by the simplicity and power of the base CComponent class in the Yii framework. [...] Every class in the framework extends from the CComponent class, which means that all subclasses work as components and can raise and handle events as well as be reusable and configurable. This packs a lot of punch for such a little class!

In this first post of the series, he looks at how this base class lets you work with class properties using the magic getters and setters. He includes some code showing how to set them up and how to use it to configure your object by passing in other component and their configuration.

In a recent post from the AppBackr blog they share a solution they've found for running unit tests automatically for lazy coders using a combination of PHPUnit, Watchr and Growl notifications (OS X-only, obviously).

Now you could run [your] tests manually after each change by typing 'phpunit ', but we were looking for something a little more comfortable. We want to decrease the transactional cost of running the tests as much as possible to make the lives of our engineers more pleasant. Making testing easy is the only way the engineers will run the tests frequently.

Instead they opted for Watchr, a tool that keeps an eye on a list of files looking for a change. When one happens, a process is fired off - in this case a PHPUnit run. To make it even easier to see feedback, they integrated it with Growl to show pass or fail results. He includes the source for his Watchr script to help you get started.

In another in his framework series, Jason Gilmore has a new post on PHPBuilder.com about another popular framework - the Yii framework. He introduces you to the framework and shows the creation of a sample, basic site.

Frameworks have been the topic du jour here at PHPBuilder.com, with numerous recent articles covering DooPHP and Fat-free. In this latest stop on the framework tour, we'll check out Yii, a relatively new framework (less than three years old) that boasts an impressive array of features and an equally impressive array of users, among them the enormously popular Stay.com.

He walks you through the install (downloading the latest version) and shows how to use the command-line tool to automatically generate the basic website structure. He continues on showing how to update the main page and template, how to get it connected to a MySQL database and how to use the Gii tool to create basic admin forms for working with the tables.

On the php|architect blog today there's a new post about a framework that joins together two others (ExtJS and Yii) to make for an even more powerful combo - Ext4Yii.

Ext4Yii is essentially a bridge between these two projects, which aims to integrate Ext JS as an extension for Yii. Ext4Yii is implemented as a templating system, which consumes XML models where you define widget elements like buttons or handlers (in embedded JavaScript code which can take advantage of Ext-powered methods and objects).

This templating system integrates directly with the Yii framework's structure and gives you access to a lot of the ExtJS objects without the need for multiple calls to .js files. The tool also comes with a bundled plugin for Netbeans that can help you get started quickly (rather than having to work out the syntax by hand from the start).

In responding to some of the benchmarks posted about the speed and performance of Symfony 2 and how they truly compare to some of the other frameworks out there, Paul Jones has shared his thoughts and process on using his benchmarking system to get some differing results.

Fabien Potencier released Symfony 2.0.0alpha1 last week, along with some benchmarks showing its performance. I am glad to see that Fabien used my benchmarking system and methodology, and am happy to see that he is paying attention to the performance of his framework. I take this as an acceptance on his part that my methodology is legitimate and valid, and that it has value when comparing framework responsiveness.

Paul points out that Fabien's reporting is a bit inaccurate and goes on to talk about how his numbers are off and what a more correct version of the benchmarks would look like. He takes the testing methodology that Fabien used in his process and reapplies it to his benchmarking process using clean Amazon EC2 instances and Siege to run some response/request testing on software running on each framework. Numbers are run for three different comparisons and results are found...but you'll have to read the rest of the post to find those out.

Fred Wu has put together a comparison of three of the more well-known PHP frameworks out there - CodeIgniter, Kohana and the relative newcomer Yii.

It was over a year ago that I wrote the article that compares CodeIgniter and Kohana. Since then both CodeIgniter and Kohana have seen major progress with the release of CodeIgniter 1.7.0 and Kohana 2.3. [...] Let's see how they compare with each other.

He judges on a list of criteria including licensing, supported databases, community, documentation and modularity. Ratings are gives for each framework (like "Excellent" or "Good") on each item with over twenty aspects considered.

If you're looking for a framework to try out on your next Web 2.0 application, Knut Urdalen suggests you give Yii a try.

The Yii Framework is built for speed and the goal is to provide the best possible framework for your next large-scale web 2.0 applications. With it's superior performance, Yii still provides an easy-to-use and highly extensible feature set that is richer than most other frameworks.

If you haven't tried it, he points out the "getting started" tutorial offered on the Yii site as well as some of the performance benchmarks (including those for the next release, 1.0.1).

Knut Urdalen has passed along the announcement about the 1.0 release of the Yii framework for PHP being released (by Qiang Xue).

The Yii Framework builds upon learnings and findings from over 5 years of development of PRADO. If you already know PRADO you'll get the hold of Yii quite fast. The framework is already documented quite well in The Definitive Guide to Yii (a good place to start for beginners), in addition to complete class reference and an active forum where you can meet other developers.

There is also an extension repository and a few benchmarks to help you compare it to some of the other popular frameworks out there.