Ordered dropDownList using relations?

Question

I have some forms in Yii using the following to get lists of data from related tables in the form of a drop down:

dropDownList(CHtml::listData(Company::model()->findAll(array('order' => 'company ASC'))));

This works, but that means for every drop down list (which theres a lot of) I'm putting this array('order' => 'company ASC' in every one.

Is this the best way to do it? Is there not a way to get this data using the model relations(), and specifying the order within the relation?

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 07 '11 at 18:15

I believe that the correct way to do this is by using scopes.

You can define any number of scopes that order the result set and use them like so:

Company::model()->scopeName()->findAll();

If your application always requires companies to be fetched in a sorted order, you can even define a default scope in your model class:

public function defaultScope() {
    return array('order' => 'company ASC');
}

This will result in every call to Company::model()->findAll(); returning sorted results.

But what you want to send to the database is probably the Company ID, not the company name (which is what'll appear in the dropdownlist).. How do you handle that? — Felipe, Jan 31 '12 at 11:19

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '13 at 20:04

I usually add an opts() methods to each model that could be used as source for a dropdown:

class Company extends CActiveRecord
{
    // ...

    public static opts()
    {
        $opts = array();
        foreach(self::model()->findAll(array('order'=>'name ASC')) as $model)
            $opts[$model->id] = $model->name;
        return $opts;
    }

It's used like this

echo $form->dropDownList($user, 'company_id', Company::opts());

If you need the same options several times on a page, you could even "cache" the result in a private static class variable or use DAO to fetch the list data in a more efficient way.

Ordered dropDownList using relations?

2 Answers2