Multiple _form views on a single create view [Yii] - php

Question

I'm trying to merge 3 models to create a fourth one. I have model1, model2 and model3 and I want to merge them into modelMaster. I've also created controllers for all of them. When I call modelMaster/create action, I render the modelMaster/create view which renders the modelMaster/_form view. Inside this _form view, I also want to render model1/_form, model2/_form and a CHtml::dropDownList(), wich takes datas from model3. However, this doesn't work. How can I combine these three different views into one another?

Answer 1

If you try to skip the form generate from the _form views and use unique model names, I think you can use this manual: single form with more models
So the generate of the form definition handles always the parent view and the _form's only the inputs
The other way to use single model in views, create a form model by extend CFormModel, and handle the data binding between this model and the wrapped submodels

Answer 2

If you want to nest several forms into one master form you have to adjust the form templates accordingly. All of your modelMaster/create, model1/_form, model2/_form-views create and render a new CActiveForm (and thus several <form> tags).
Since you cannot nest form-elements in html (how should html know which action to pass the data to) you have to avoid this by doing the following:
Extract the inputs of the form you want to nest into a new view, e.g. model1/_formInputs would look like
...
<?php echo $form->labelEx($model,'name'); ?>
<?php echo $form->textField($model,'name');
<?php echo $form->error($model,'name');
...
alter the model1/create and the other views and get a reference to the form created there, by assigning the return of $this->beginWidget to the variable $form (if not already done):
<?php $form = $this->beginWidget('CActiveForm', array(
'id'=>'foo',
)); ?>
replace the former input fields with
<?php $this->renderPartial('model1/_formInputs', array('form' => $form); ?>
Now, for example the old model1/create-view should work as expected
To get your multi-model-form working you just have to get the reference to the form created in modelMaster/create and use it to renderPartial all */_formInputs you require. Please also remember to include the models for the inputs into the renderPartial-call. So modelMaster/create would look something like:
<?php $form = $this->beginWidget('CActiveForm', array(
'id'=>'foo',
)); ?>
/* Master Inputs here */
// Rendering other models' inputs
<?php $this->renderPartial('model1/_formInputs', array('form' => $form, 'model' => $model1); ?>
<?php $this->renderPartial('model2/_formInputs', array('form' => $form, 'model' => $model2); ?>
/* Render Form Buttons here */
<?php $this->endWidget(); ?>

Answer 3

Submit with Ajax, in Yii it is easy to do and it will keep things easy to understand in the controllers, each controller will have a save and respond with json to confirm the save. There is already ajax validation.
/**
* Performs the AJAX validation.
* #param CModel the model to be validated
*/
protected function performAjaxValidation($model)
{
if(isset($_POST['ajax']) && $_POST['ajax']==='employee-form')
{
$valid = CActiveForm::validate($model);
if(strlen($valid) > 2) {
echo $valid;
Yii::app()->end();
}
}
}
As you can see I have modified it to return the error if there is one (validate returns [] if it is valid, I should probably check for that instead of strlen >2 ), otherwise let the script continue, in this case it will go to the save function.