Yii and MVC pattern - php

Question

I am creating a new Portlet in Yii. this widget show most recent Comment of a Issue. I want to show this only if Issue has comment and do not show it (event title) if Issue doesn't have any comments.
So my psudo code in view file as below:
Check number of comments process:
<?php
$countIssue = count($model->issues);
$i = 0; $j = 0;
while($i < $countIssue)
{
$j += $model->issues[$i]->commentCount;
$i ++;
}
?>
if ($countIssue >0 ) {
if ($j >0)
Display the widget
}
Else
Don't display the widget
I am just wonderring is my code suitable for MVC model. Could you give me a direction? Should I bring the Check number of comment process to Model or Controller , or is the above Ok fo MVC pattern?
Thank you!

Answer 1

First, I would have moved this logic into the run() method of your portlet class (the one that extends CPorlet).
Next, I would have defined a STAT relation in Issue class. This relation is only for counting of comments and would allow you to use a statement like:
$issue = Issue::model()->findByPk($issue_id);
// $comments_count below is exactly what you would expect... .
$comments_count = $issue->commentsCount;
Finally, combining it all I recommend the following approach inside the portlet's run() method as follows:
If ($someIssue->commentsCount > 0) {
// do something and in the end, when you want to render the portlet, you do...
$this->render("view_file_name");
}

Answer 2

I think there are many MVC friendly ways to do this, mainly the idea is to put data logic in Models then handle requests through Controllers while ideally Views should only be used for displaying purposes.
Personally i will use Yii named-scopes (which comes originally from Rails) to achieve the most recent filter like this:
Model:
class Comment extends CActiveRecord
{
......
public function scopes()
{
return array(
'recently'=>array(
'order'=>'create_time DESC',
'limit'=>5,
),
);
}
}
To get a list comments if only the issue has some you can do something like this in the Controller:
if($issue->comments)
$isseComments = Comment::model()->recently()->findAll(); //using the named scope to the recent ones only
$this->render('your_action',array(
.....
'issue' => $issue,
'issueComments'=>$isseComments,
));
And your View will remain tidy & clean:
if($issueComments > 0)
//Display the widget
else
// Don't