What this book covers

Chapter 1, Composer, Configuration, Classes, and Path Aliases, covers the basics of a Yii2 application. In this chapter, you'll learn the core conventions of Yii2 and how to configure it as a multi-environment application. You'll also discover how to use Composer, a dependency management tool for managing your applications' software dependencies.

Chapter 2, Console Commands and Applications, focuses on how to use the built-in Yii2 console commands as it guides you through creating your own commands.

Chapter 3, Migrations, DAO, and Query Building, teaches you how to create migrations in Yii2 and how to interact with your database using database access objects (DAO) and how to use Yii2's query builder.

Chapter 4, Active Record, Models, and Forms, teaches you how to create and use Active Record to effortlessly interact with a database. Furthermore, you'll also discover how to create models to represent information not stored in databases and how to create web forms based upon Active Record models and normal models.

Chapter 5, Modules, Widgets, and Helpers, covers how to incorporate modules inside of our application. This chapter will also cover how to create and use dynamic widgets and will additionally cover Yii2's powerful helper classes.

Chapter 6, Asset Management, focuses on how to create and manage our assets using asset bundles and how to manage our assets using the asset command. This chapter also covers several strategies to build and generate our asset library using powerful tools such as Node Package Manage and Bower.

Chapter 7, Authenticating and Authorizing Users, teaches you how to verify the authenticity of users in Yii2 using several common authentication schemes (such as OAuth authentication, basic HTTP authentication, and header authentication) as well as shows you how to grant them access to specific sections of your applications.

Chapter 8, Routing, Responses, and Events, focuses on how Yii2's routing and response classes work in Yii2. In this chapter, we'll cover how to handle data both in and out of our application and discover how to tap into Yii2's powerful event system.

Chapter 9, RESTful APIs, talks about how to quickly and effortlessly extend your application with a RESTful JSON and XML API using Yii2's ActiveController class.

Chapter 10, Testing with Codeception, helps you learn how to create unit, functional, and acceptance tests for your applications using a powerful testing tool called Codeception. In this chapter, you'll also learn how to create fixtures to represent your data for testing purposes.

Chapter 11, Internationalization and Localization, covers how to localize our applications and build them to support multiple languages. Additionally, you will master how to create and manage translation files using Yii2 console commands.

Chapter 12, Performance and Security, covers many ways to improve the performance of your Yii2 application and how to keep it secure against modern day attacks on web applications.

Chapter 13, Debugging and Deploying, helps you become well-versed in how to debug your Yii2 applications using both application logging and the Yii2 debug tool. Furthermore, you will discover the fundamentals of deploying your Yii2 applications in a seamless and non-disruptive fashion.