Extension Development

July 5, 2018 · View on GitHub

If you plan to reuse functionality, it is recommended to provide the code in composer packages. Luckily, Yii 2.0 Framework is equipped with a code generator for creating ready to use extension skeletons in a minute.

Building an extension

Note! Code generation is only available with YII_ENV_DEV=true.

Generating skeleton with Gii

To create an extension from the command line adjust the parameters in the following command and run it from your project root.

 ./yii gii/extension \
     --vendorName=mycompany \
     --packageName=yii2-mypackage \
     --namespace=mycompany\\mypackage\\ \
     --license=BSD-3-Clause \
     --title="Extension for Yii 2.0 Framework" \
     --description="Provides cool stuff" \
     --authorName="Your Name" \
     --authorEmail=you@yourdomain.com

This will generate a folder in runtime/tmp-extensions/yii2-mypackage with example code for the extension.

Make your extension available via composer

Create a new private or public repository, eg. on GitHub.

Then, go to the folder with the generated code inside your project's runtime folder and initializie a temporary Git repository

cd runtime/tmp-extensions/yii2-mypackage
git init
git add .

Check if you have added the correct files with

git status

It should show three files to be committed. If everything is fine commit and push your changes to your repo.

git commit -m "initial commit"
git remote add origin https://github.com/mycompany/yii2-mypackage.git
git push origin master

This is a one-time push from this repo, you should install your extension via composer now.

Private packages

If your package should be availible via Toran Proxy add repository URL to repository list and add a Deploy Key to project settings.

If you are developing packages for a private repository you can enable your package by adding it's repository URL to composer.json

"repositories": [
{
  "type": "git",
  "url": "git@github.com:mycompany/yii2-mypackage.git"
},

You should use the git protocol when using private repositories in conjunction with private-public-key authentication when deploying remotely or in a virtualized environment. You can add container-files like .ssh/known_hosts or .gitconfig in the Dockerfile

Public packages

To make your extension available publicly, submit it to packagist.

It should be available after a few minutes, if you are heavily developing an extension you can still add it's repository manually to composer.json, like described above. Composer will then check the repository on every update and you'll get always the latest commits.

Install package

Now get the code in any Yii2 application with

composer require mycompany/yii2-mypackage:dev-master

Depending on your extension and its bootstrapping configuration you may have to configure it in the application configuration. The classes from your package are available via auto-loading and accessible by their namespace.

Alternative: Using the Gii Web interface

You can also use the Gii web-interface and your favorite Git UI client to accomplish the tasks described above.

Open Gii > Extension Generator
Enter values
Click preview
Click generate
Create Git repo, commit and push to repository
Require via composer

Forking 3rd-party extensions in vendor

Set constraint to @dev before starting code modifications and run

composer require vendor/package:@dev

If you've already changed code in a dist-package, you can move away the package with the changes. mv package _package, run the above command and then copy only the contents from the modified folder into the package folder. git status should now your changes now.

Update configuration to get sources for the forked package

"config": {
    "preferred-install": {
        "the-vendor/*": "source",
        "*": "auto"
    },
},

Forking asset repositories

TBD