Sometimes we want to collect user input in a batch mode. That is, the user can enter the information for multiple model instances and submit them all at once. We call this tabular input because the input fields are often presented in an HTML table.
To work with tabular input, we first need to create or populate an array
of model instances, depending on whether we are inserting or updating the
data. We then retrieve the user input data from the $_POST
variable and
assign it to each model. A slight difference from single model input is
that we retrieve the input data using $_POST['ModelClass'][$i]
instead of
$_POST['ModelClass']
.
public function actionBatchUpdate()
{
// retrieve items to be updated in a batch mode
// assuming each item is of model class 'Item'
$items=$this->getItemsToUpdate();
if(isset($_POST['Item']))
{
$valid=true;
foreach($items as $i=>$item)
{
if(isset($_POST['Item'][$i]))
$item->attributes=$_POST['Item'][$i];
$valid=$valid && $item->validate();
}
if($valid) // all items are valid
// ...do something here
}
// displays the view to collect tabular input
$this->render('batchUpdate',array('items'=>$items));
}
Having the action ready, we need to work on the batchUpdate
view to
display the input fields in an HTML table.
<div class="yiiForm"> echo CHtml::beginForm(); <table> <tr><th>Name</th><th>Price</th><th>Count</th><th>Description</th></tr> foreach($items as $i=>$item): <tr> <td> echo CHtml::activeTextField($item,"name[$i]"); </td> <td> echo CHtml::activeTextField($item,"price[$i]"); </td> <td> echo CHtml::activeTextField($item,"count[$i]"); </td> <td> echo CHtml::activeTextArea($item,"description[$i]"); </td> </tr> endforeach; </table> echo CHtml::submitButton('Save'); echo CHtml::endForm(); </div><!-- yiiForm -->
Note in the above that we use "name[$i]"
instead of "name"
as the
second parameter when calling CHtml::activeTextField.
If there is anything validation error, the corresponding input fields will be highlighted automatically, just like the single model input we described earlier on.
Signup or Login in order to comment.