Question

I am doing a small application in Yii Framework for that my database is something like this

 === Invoices ===
  id (PK)
  customer_id
  invoice_title
  order_no
  invoice_issue_date
  due_date
  description

  === Customers ===
  id (PK)
  email_address
  customer_name
  address
  city
  state
  postal_code
  description

I have rendered the Customer model in Invoice model so that I can enter all the values for both models in a single Invoice form.But there is one problem,let us assume that I have a customer name xyz which I had saved before.Now when I am going to again fill the Customer name with xyz,it should show all the fields of both models like invoice_title,order_no,invoice_issue_date,due_date,description,email_address,customer_name,address etc. in that input fields of the form so that I don’t have to re-enter all the fields again.So how this can be achive in Yii framework.Any help and suggestions will be highly appreciable.More clarification on codes that I have done can be shared if needed.
Please help me out.I am totally stuck here.

Answer 1

To do this as everyone has already mentioned you need ajax, and some javascript. The logic is something like this:

1. When a value is selected in the dropdown for customer name, trigger an ajax call to retrieve the information about that user. This can be easily done with the ajax option, which is available as an additional htmlOption for some html element helpers in CHtml, as part of clientChange.

   echo $form->dropDownList($model,'customer_name',CHtml::listData(Customers::model()->findAll(),'id','customer_name'),
      array(// htmlOptions
        'ajax'=>array(// special htmlOption through clientChange, for ajax
              'type'=>'GET', 
              'url'=>$this->createUrl('controllername/customerdetails'),// action that will generate the data
              'data'=>'js:"id="+$(this).val()',// this is the data that we are sending to the action in the controller
              'dataType'=>'json',// type of data we expect back from the server
              'success'=>'js:updateFields'// a javascript function that will execute when the request completes successfully
        )
      )
    );
   

   The documentation for the above options for ajax can be seen in jquery’s ajax documentation.

2. Then in the server side find the particular customer, and send a response to the browser. Example:

   // in the controllername code an action that will return the values as json
   public function actionCustomerdetails($id){
       $var=Customers::model()->findByPk($id);
       echo CJSON::encode($var);
   }
   

3. When you receive the server response populate the respective fields. This can be done in the success function callback for ajax, in the above code it was updateFields:

   Yii::app()->clientScript->registerScript('update','
       function updateFields(data, textStatus, jqXHR){
           // select each input field by id, and update its value
           $("#Customers_postal_code").val(data.postal_code);
           $("#Customers_city").val(data.city);
           $("#Customers_address").val(data.address);
           // similarly update the fields for the other inputs
       }
   ');
   

Notes:
Your customer can have many invoices, so the question will be which invoice to select given a customer name. That’s something you’ll have to handle, i think my answer has enough code to get you going.

To know the input field ids, you can simply check the generated html.