Yii 1.1 Application Development Cookbook

After reading "The Definitive Guide to Yii" (provided with the framework) and starting some basic applications with Yii, I thought it was time for me to explore Yii some more and get most out of it. As part of a promotion program of Packt Publishing, I was able to get a free review copy of the eBook "Yii 1.1 Application Development Cookbook" by Alexander Makarov. This review consist of three parts; a short summary of the book, some pros and cons and my final conclusion. == Short book summary == As the book is a "cookbook", it gives you recipes for making Yii-dishes. With its 13 Chapters it covers probably all interesting aspects of making applications on the Yii framework i.e. using the framework efficiently, extending the framework (community components / other libraries), taking care of security, debugging and logging, fine tune an application, making it production ready and deploying it to a server. Check the books table of contents for a complete list of subjects. Every recipe in the book consists of a short introduction, code implementation, explanation of the code and a list of additional references of where you also might be interested in. Most of the time you will get enough information from the recipe itself, but if the recipe is something completely new it's probably best to extend your knowledge with some additional information. == Pros and cons == After reading the book I came up with the following list of pros and cons. As probably every educational book, the book has some typos, I wouldn't call it a con though. = Pros = .Easy to follow recipes (intermediate level) .Additional references with every recipe .Covers a lot important aspects .Errata page on a dedicated site for the book = Cons = .Highly repetitive instructions == Final conclusion == The books preface suggests the book is for developers with good knowledge of PHP5 and is familiar with the basics of Yii. In my opinion less knowledge of PHP5 will also get the job done, as important aspects of the language will be referenced in the additional references with the recipes. It might slow down the learning process though. If you understand the structure the book provides, and don't mind repetitive instructions for every recipe, you might want to buy this book to extend your Yii knowledge. The book certainly helped my understanding of the Yii framework and made me able to produce more secure, better performing code and produce applications in a shorter time.