The problem is I can’t seem to retrieve the attributes of the extraFieldValues referenced model in _form.php, did a var_dump and the attributes (which should have no value, currently) are not there. I think the problem is that the joined table is empty, but that shouldn’t be a problem with an outer join?
This is OK. $rel_models will be an array of ExtraFieldValues. Though it can be an array of zero length, it is an array.
But when you have created an model instance, the things are different.
$model = new ExtraFields;
$rel_models = $model->extraFieldValues;
This is NG. $rel_models will be null, or ‘$model->extraFieldValues’ will throw an exception. I forgot which.
So you need to write substantially different codes to get the model instances for the form depending on which action you are working with, create or update.