Yii, get value from other table with foreign key

Question

I'm prety new to yii framework so i could use some help with something. Lets say i got a table in my database with users, 1 of the profile fields is nationality. In another table i got a lot of nationalities like this:

 id    Nationality    short
  1    Germany         DE
  2    France          FR
  3    Netherlands     NL

etc... about 60+ nationalities. In the usertable, the user nationality is linked with this table, like this:

id    username    nationality
1      user            1

that means the nationality of user 1 = germany. but how can i select germany from the nationalities table when im in the profile view?

i hope im clear, else ask :)

greets, stefan.

Answer 1

You need model classes for both tables, eg

class Profile extends CActiveRecord {
    ...
}

class Nationality extends CActiveRecord {
    ...
}

Then in the Profile model you need a relation to Nationality :

public function relations() {
    return array(
        'nationality' => array(self::BELONGS_TO, 'Nationality', 'nationality'),
    ),
}

The name of the relation 'nationality' is how you refer to the related model, eg:

$profile = Profile::model()->findByPk($id);
echo $profile->nationality->short;

Resources

• Has vs Belongs
• Good schemas
• Relational Active Record

Answer 2

Tahts what relations are for: see relational model :

'nationality' => array(self::BELONGS_TO, 'Nationality', 'nationality')

Amd in your view, if you are using a CDetailView you can reference the nationality by its relation name, and call its attributes with dot notation:

nationality.short

read the CDetailView docs for more examples