Creating widgets

A widget is a reusable client-side code (containing JavaScript, CSS, and HTML) with minimal logic wrapped in a yii\base\Widget object that we can easily insert and apply in any view.

Building a widget requires you to extend two methods of yii\base\Widget:

• The init() method initializes the object
• The run() method executes the object

In order to instance a widget, it is enough to call the static widget() method that accepts just one parameter or better still an array containing values for its public properties.

The following is an example:

    MyWidget::widget(['prop1' => 'value of prop1', …])

This returns a string containing widget output, passing its value value of prop1 for its prop1 public properties.

If we need to insert an extra code in a widget's execution (for example, in the ActiveForm widget), we have a more complex way of instantiating the widget, using the begin() and end() methods.

The first method, begin(), accepts a function parameter...