What's new in Yii 22.0

Yii 22.0 adds ways to organize HTTP endpoints, choose client-side integrations and connect existing services. This page highlights practical changes and links to their usage guides. For an existing Yii 2.0 application, follow Upgrading from Yii 2.0 for compatibility requirements and migration steps.

Actions without a controller

An endpoint can now be a class extending Action, dispatched directly through an application’s or module’s actionMap or actionNamespace. Its public run() method accepts typed request parameters and injected services:

public function run(int $id, \yii\web\Response $response): \yii\web\Response
{
    $response->format = \yii\web\Response::FORMAT_JSON;
    $response->data = ['id' => $id];

    return $response;
}

A query value id=7 becomes an integer; invalid or missing required input produces HTTP 400. The response component is injected by name. Constructor dependencies use the normal DI container; custom service parameters in run() need a matching component or registered definition.

Actions can be grouped around a use case or vertical slice and delegate business work to application/domain services. Controller actions remain available. Yii supplies dispatch and DI; the application chooses its architecture and authorization policies.

Read Standalone Actions for complete registration examples, a quote use case, module routing, filters, CSRF responsibilities and lifecycle hooks. See also action dependency injection.

Explicit client integrations

ActiveForm, GridView, CheckboxColumn, CAPTCHA and built-in client validators use configurable client-script strategies. Core server rendering and validation remain usable without those strategies. The yiisoft/yii2-jquery extension supplies the jQuery implementations; applications can supply their own strategies.

Client behavior and visual styling are separate choices. Core form fields, tables and pagers no longer add Bootstrap classes automatically, so configure the classes or UI extension your application needs.

• Forms: client behavior and styling
• Client-side validation
• Data widget interaction and styling

For inline JavaScript, View::POS_READY uses DOMContentLoaded and View::POS_LOAD uses the native window load event. Neither automatically registers jQuery or injects $:

$view->registerJs(
    "document.getElementById('save').addEventListener('click', saveDraft);",
    \yii\web\View::POS_READY,
);

Here the page supplies the save element and saveDraft function. See Working with Client Scripts for registration and dependencies.

Ordering and paging a complete UNION

The query builder separates modifiers on a SELECT operand from modifiers on the combined UNION result:

$query = (new \yii\db\Query())
    ->select(['id'])
    ->from('current_orders')
    ->union((new \yii\db\Query())->select(['id'])->from('archived_orders'))
    ->unionOrderBy(['id' => SORT_ASC])
    ->unionLimit(20)
    ->unionOffset(10);

This requests twenty IDs from the combined result, skipping the first ten in the combined ordering. ActiveDataProvider uses these modifiers for UNION sorting and pagination, while preserving operand-level modifiers. See Query Builder and Data Providers.

PSR-3 logging in both directions

Use PsrLogger to send a library’s PSR-3 messages to Yii’s configured logging targets:

$logger = new \yii\log\PsrLogger(category: 'checkout');
$logger->info('Quote prepared for {quantity} items.', ['quantity' => 2]);

Use PsrTarget when Yii messages should go to an external PSR-3 logger. The adapters preserve PSR-3 message context and original levels where available. See Logging for configuration and filtering; avoid routing both adapters back into the same logging pipeline.

Composer autoloading and npm assets

Composer loads framework and application classes. Define application namespaces in composer.json; Yii path aliases still resolve paths but do not load classes. The default @npm alias points to <basePath>/node_modules, and @bower is no longer predefined.

See Class Autoloading, Entry Scripts and installing npm assets for the application setup.

Database behavior to use deliberately

The database layer also updates several contracts that affect everyday code:

• MySQL/MariaDB connections default to utf8mb4; an explicit connection charset or DSN charset can override it. Use Connection::getEffectiveCharset() when configuration depends on the resolved charset.
• PostgreSQL applies an explicitly configured schema as the session search_path; leaving it unspecified preserves the server’s path.
• SQLite upserts use native INSERT ... ON CONFLICT. Unrelated constraint violations still fail; an upsert is not a blanket instruction to ignore invalid data.
• PostgreSQL structured column alterations can express type, nullability and defaults. A bare type alteration preserves the existing null/default state instead of resetting it implicitly.

See DAO connection configuration, upserts and database migrations.

Yii 22.0 requires PHP 8.3 or later and raises the supported database versions. Check the upgrade requirements and each installed extension before changing dependencies. These highlights are a guide to the version’s behavior, not a compatibility guarantee for every application.