Creating dropdown list from related table

Yii 1.1 General Discussion
1

I have 2 tables:

tbl_category

Primary Key: id

tbl_content

Foreign Key: category_id

What I am trying to do is populate the category_id field in a drop down list in a create form that pulls all the categories from the tbl_category table. I looked up the code for this and added the following code in the public function actionCreate() located in the content controller:


public function actionCreate()

	{

	  $model=new Content;

	// retrieve the category model from db

       $categorymodel = Category::model()->findAll(

               array('order' => 'description'));

 

       // format list as $key=>$value with listData

       $categorylist = CHtml::listData($categorymodel, 

          'id', 'description');

[/code]

In the view _form, I then reference the $categorylist as my key=>value pairs to populate the dropdown:




<?php echo CHtml::dropDownList('category_id', $select, $categorylist, array('empty' => '(Select a category'));?>

I am getting the following error when I try and access the form:

"Invalid argument supplied for foreach()"

Can someone tell me what I am doing wrong here. Are my naming conventions incorrect?

Any help would be appreciated.

2

Hi,

I try to use CHtml::activeDropDownList when using listData.

*Not tested.




<?php echo CHtml::activeDropDownList($model,'field_name',CHtml::listData(Category::model()->findAll(array('order'=>'description')),'id','description'), array('empty' => '(Select a category'));?>

Matt

3

there might be two problems -

  1. $select is not assigned anything.

  2. you are not passing $categorylist in your render method in the controller

Maybe this e.g. will help - http://yippyii.com/examples/dropdownlist

If the above does not help, post the complete controller action code as well as the complete view code

-Mukesh

4

Thanks for the help. Yes, it was the select not being assigned. In any case, I added the following function in the content model and it works perfectly:




  public function getCategories()

    { 

     //this function returns the list of categories to use in a dropdown	

      return CHtml::listData(Category::model()->findAll(), 'id', 'description');

    }

in views>>content>>_form.php file:




<?php echo CHtml::activeDropDownList($model,'category_id', $model->getCategories(),array('prompt' => '(Select Category)')); ?>
5

Hello there im having a problem creating a dynamic drop down list, i’ve tried this method and it does create a drop down list but when submitting its giving an error that categories cannot be blank can someone help what am i getting wrong?