Yii walkthrough

End-to-end: from lerd install to a Yii 2 basic app running on https://yiiapp.test against MySQL.

Prerequisites

You've already run lerd install once on this machine. If not, see Installation.

Drive it from your AI assistant

Run lerd mcp:enable-global once and your AI assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Junie, Codex, Gemini, Copilot, Antigravity, Windsurf) can call every command below through the grouped MCP tools: site action: "link", env action: "setup", framework action: "setup", db action: "create", worker, etc. See AI Integration.

---

1. Create the project

lerd new

cd ~/Lerd
lerd new yiiapp --framework=yii

existing repo

cd ~/Lerd
git clone git@github.com:you/yiiapp.git
cd yiiapp && lerd composer install

lerd new runs composer create-project yiisoft/yii2-app-basic, the scaffold the Yii definition declares. On a terminal it carries on into link and setup; from a script it stops after the scaffold and prints the next step.

---

2. Register the site

cd yiiapp
lerd link

 → detecting framework… ✓ yii
 → Using PHP 8.4 (yii supports 7.4–8.4)
 → provisioning PHP-FPM runtime… ✓ php 8.4 · node 22 · nginx vhost written
 ✓ linked in 935ms

  Site        http://yiiapp.test
  PHP         8.4 · FPM
  Framework   yii

Yii is detected from yiisoft/yii2 in composer.json rather than from the yii console script, which Yii 3 ships too. The document root is web/, and the definition supports PHP 7.4 to 8.4.

---

3. Configure the database

lerd init

Yii keeps its connection in config/db.php as a PHP array rather than in a .env, and lerd writes it there. Picking MySQL sets the dsn to mysql:host=lerd-mysql;dbname=yiiapp with the root / lerd credentials, PostgreSQL sets a pgsql: dsn against lerd-postgres, and every other key in the file is left as it was. The original is kept as config/db.php.before_lerd the first time.

lerd secure
lerd env

lerd env reads the dsn prefix already in config/db.php to tell which service the project uses, starts it, and creates the yiiapp and yiiapp_testing databases. No application URL is written, because Yii keeps none here and yii\db\Connection refuses a key it does not know.

---

4. Bootstrap the project

lerd setup

Setup offers php yii migrate --interactive=0, ticked by default, and php yii fixture/load "*" once the project has a tests/unit/fixtures folder.

---

5. Verify

curl -i https://yiiapp.test
lerd site:doctor

The doctor checks the PHP version against the definition's range, the vhost, the worker units and that the site answers.

---

Workers

lerd worker start queue

The queue worker runs php yii queue/listen --verbose and appears once the project requires yiisoft/yii2-queue. The basic app does not, so a fresh project shows no worker until you add it.

---

Quick commands

Command	Runs	What it does
cache:flush	php yii cache/flush-all	Clear all application caches
migrate	php yii migrate --interactive=0	Apply outstanding migrations

---

Next steps

• Frameworks & Workers: how the framework definition drives all of the above
• Queue Workers: tuning, retries, and worker logs
• Database: lerd db:import, lerd db:shell, snapshots
• AI Integration (MCP): drive lerd from Claude Code, Cursor, etc.