How to save a model object before updating it?

Yii 1.1 General Discussion
1

Hi all,

I have two tables, table A and table B:

Table A has the following fields:




id, title, body, lastupdated

and table B has those fields:




id, tblAid, title, body, lastupdated

What I want to do is that when the admin updates table A, the former record would be saved on table B.

For example:




* before updating table A*

[TableA] 1234, "new medicine trials", "<p>There is an increased [...]</p>", "2010-01-10"

* after updating table A*

[TableA] 1234, "New Medical Trials are underway", "<p>There is an increased [....]</p>", "2011-05-17"

[TableB] 1, 1234, "new medicine trials", "<p>There is an increased [...]</p>", "2010-01-10"

How do I do that in yii?

2

I am new to yii as well so I can’t be 100% of help but I can point you to the right direction.

Any model that inherits the class CActiveRecord has a method called beforeSave() that is called before a table is being updated.

Having said that, on Table A model

you would implement the beforeSave() method:




protected function beforeSave()

{

  $tableB = new TableB();

   

  //my guess is that the Table B id is auto_increment

  $tableB->tblAid = $this->id;

  $tableB->title = $this->title;

  $tableB->body = $this->body;

  $tableB->lastupdated = $this->lastupdated;


  $tableB->save();

}

Then the update function should do the rest for TableA

Again not 100% sure this will work but I think it should. You can also getAttributes() and setAttributes() on a CActiveRecord class but I don’t know how that would work with two id’s. Perhaps somebody else could help you with that. I hope it works and it was useful.

3

BeforeSave() is called just before saving the new data… so $modelA is already changed by the user…

if you want in $modelB the original values of $modelA you need to "remember" those values before the user edits them…

you can use session for that… and then in beforeSave assign it to the $modelB

4

Hmm the object has acquired the updated values so I can’t do anything, that’s the problem actually :( (I thought of beforeSave as well)

5

Interesting, I’ll try it, thanks.

6

Isn’t it possible to create another instance of modelA to retrieve the current values?

7

Well it worked with session, but if you have any other ideas you are welcome :)

8

That is true, so we are getting the values that are already sent to the model.

What if you do this:


$tblARow = self::model->findByPk($this->id);

and then do the rest that I suggested.

ie:


$tableB->tblAid = $tblArow->id;

That way you get the data from the db before the update has been applied.