Steps to create a widget on Yii? - php

Question

I have the following code on a given view:
<?php
$form = $this->beginWidget('CActiveForm', array(
'id' => 'home-newsletter-form',
'enableAjaxValidation' => false,
'enableClientValidation' => true,
));
echo $form->textField($newsletterSubscribeForm, 'email');
echo $form->error($newsletterSubscribeForm, 'email');
echo CHtml::link("subscribe", "#", array('class'=>'btSubscribe'));
$this->endWidget();
?>
It happens that I will need this on MORE then one view, so I find a widget a better option.
I wish however to place this on a separate file (on app/widgets/ folder), and called on each view.
Can anyone please be kind enough to tell me what steps should we follow in order to achieve that?

Answer 1

Widget is the best solution here, it will keep your code DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself - focus on re-usability) as well.
<?php
// protected/components/SubscriberFormWidget.php
class SubscriberFormWidget extends CWidget
{
/**
* #var CFormModel
*/
public $form;
public function run()
{
if (! $this->form instanceof CFormModel) {
throw new RuntimeException('No valid form available.');
}
$this->render('subscriberFormWidget', array('form'=>$this->form));
}
}
And the view:
<?php
// protected/components/views/subscriberFormWidget.php
$form = $this->beginWidget('CActiveForm', array(
'id' => 'home-newsletter-form',
'enableAjaxValidation' => false,
'enableClientValidation' => true,
));
echo $form->textField($newsletterSubscribeForm, 'email');
echo $form->error($newsletterSubscribeForm, 'email');
echo CHtml::link("subscribe", "#", array('class'=>'btSubscribe'));
$this->endWidget();
sample usage inside any view
<?php $this->widget('SubscriberFormWidget', array(
'form' => $newsletterSubscribeForm
)); ?>

Answer 2

Creating a widget is very simple in Yii. It couldn't be better explained than in the following short official documentation section, Here.
I little emphasis as lots of people found this answer useful. The following words are at my own taste, how I prefer designing my Yii application building blocks: when building your widget class always bear in mind that a widget is a kind of a view in Yii (v1.x). Its not supposed to process stuff, to perform important business logic decisions. Rather, as a view it merely supposed to render stuff. The decision making code in it should be focused in finding out what to render. I used to design in the past widgets that included some AJAX processing. Today I think this is bad design. A widget should render stuff. Need an accompanying processing unit? I would pack it all in a module, with controllers, possibly model classes, and the widget as an extension in that module. Cest tout :-)

Answer 3

You are better of using partials views.
Like this:
<?php $this->renderPartial('//partials/_myview',
compact('model', 'dataProvider')
); ?>
that way you can reuse the code in other views.

Answer 4

Steps to create widget
<?php
//protected/components
class Categorywidget extends CWidget
{
public function init(){
}
public function run(){
$model=Category::model()->findAll(array("condition"=>"isactive=1"));
$listdata=CHtml::listData($model,"category_id","name");
$this->render("category/category",array('listdata'=>$listdata));
}
}
<?php
//protected/components/views
$count=count($listdata);
$div2=ceil($count/2)+1;
$i=0;
?>
<div class="categories">
<h5>Categories</h5>
<ul>
<?php foreach($listdata as $key=>$value) {
$i++;
if($div2==$i){ ?>
</ul><ul>
<?php } ?>
<li><?php echo $value; ?></li>
<?php } ?>
</ul>
</div>

Answer 5

It's easy to create a widget in Yii, Just follow the link. Create Yii Widget

Answer 6

In 2 minutes I've understand how widgets work in this very short tutorial:
How to create Breadcrumb widget