You won't regret going the Yii route. I'm amazed that people are still coding the basics from the ground up when there are already top-notch frameworks out there.
The same could be said prior to Yii regarding building from the ground up. Yii shouldn't exist based on your own argument :).
If you prefer than then I do think the larger frameworks are a good fit. What I'm saying is that I don't prefer that :).
If I need to do a SELECT on a specific field(s) then I write that statement. It's usually a 4 line function in a class that deals primarily with that table (but not necessarily as it may make sense in a different class).
I use static functions for that as well.
class User {
public static function getByEmail($email) {
return getDatabase()->one('SELECT * FROM user WHERE email=:email',
array(':email' => $email));
}
}
That's my approach. What's your thought on that coming from the mindset that a lot of that is taken care of by the framework? I'm curious since that's not a mindset I've had yet.