The most straightforward way to get started with Yii2 is to use the basic application template provided by the Yii2 team. This template is also available through the Composer tool.
Step 1 − Find a suitable directory in your hard drive and download the Composer PHAR (PHP archive) via the following command.
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
Step 2 − Then move this archive to the bin directory.
mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
Step 3 − With the Composer installed, you can install Yii2 basic application template. Run these commands.
composer global require "fxp/composer-asset-plugin:~1.1.1" composer create-project --prefer-dist yiisoft/yii2-app-basic helloworld
The first command installs the composer asset plugin, which manages npm and bower dependencies. The second command installs Yii2 basic application template in a directory called helloworld.
Step 4 − Now open the helloworld directory and launch the web server built into PHP.
php -S localhost:8080 -t web
Step 5 − Then open http://localhost:8080 in your browser. You can see the welcome page.
