In Yii, how can I call views belonging to another models that has a HAS_MANY relation defined with the current controller's model?

Question

I need some guidance on how to call views within a controller for models that have a relationship defined with the current controller"s model.

In my case, I have a model names "catalog", which has a HAS_MANY relationship with another model called "items". In the "view" view for my "catalog" model, I would like to display an ajax form to let user add "items" to the current "catalog" and also I want to render the current "catalog" model"s items.

In theory, I should have a distinct 'item' controller who should take care of rendering a single 'item' view and creation form.

The issue is that thanks to the relation defined in my 'catalog' model, I am loading all the catalog's items at the same time as when I load a 'catalog' model. But since I also want to be able to independently create 'items' for the current 'catalog' without updating the whole catalog model, I want to render in my 'catalog' view a 'item' create form. I also need to have an independent 'item' view action so that I can render via AJAX newly created 'item' without rendering the whole 'catalog' again.

I'm thinking that in my 'catalog' 'view' view, I should loop through the $catalog->items and for each do a renderPartial of the 'item' 'view' view.

But I have read that using views from another controller within a given controller is an absolute no no. Same thing for rendering the 'item' create form, which belongs to the 'item' controller, but that I want to render within my 'catalog' 'view' view.

Is it acceptable to make an exception for this case? This is what I'm currently doing, in my 'catalog' 'view' view:

foreach($catalog->items as $item):
  $this->renderPartial('/item/_view', array ( 'item' => $item ) , FALSE, FALSE );

Let me know if there is a better design pattern that I should be adhering to? Thanks in advance for your help.

Lothaire

Answer 1

I'm afraid I didn't undestand you completely but why you don't use many instances of CActiveForm widget for Item model?

In view file:

    foreach($catalog->items as $item)
    {
        $form = $this->beginWidget('CActiveForm', array(
           'id'=>"catalog-form-{$item->id}",
           'action'=>"/ajax/item/update/",
           'enableClientValidation'=>true,
           'clientOptions'=>array(
            'validateOnSubmit'=>true,
           ),
        )
        echo CHtml::hiddenField('itemID', $item->id)
        //...
        $this->endWidget();
   );

And then in /ajax/item/update/ you can do everything you want, including DAO instead of AR. There's no especial need to keep relations btw models in the controller for any call from this form.