Question

I am trying to implement something similar to the way Yii CActiveDataProvider parse complex expressions. Take the following codes as an example, I would basically like to be able to specify something like ‘date(“M j, Y”, $data->create_time)’ in the value.

Any one knows which class in Yii will provide good insight? I looked at CDataColumn class, but not much luck.

$this-widget('zii.widgets.grid.CGridView', array(
'dataProvider'=$dataProvider,
'columns'=array(
    'title',          // display the 'title' attribute
    'category.name',  // display the 'name' attribute of the 'category' relation
    'content:html',   // display the 'content' attribute as purified HTML
    array(            // display 'create_time' using an expression
        'name'='create_time',
        'value'='date("M j, Y", $data-create_time)',
    ),
),

));

Answer 1

Do you want to create a widget that can evaluate a PHP Expression?

There is this method evaluateExpression which is also used by CDataColumn. You can see how the CDataColumn use it in the method renderDataCellContent.

As you see the code inside method evaluateExpression, it is using eval and call_user_func.

And if you use PHP 5.3, you can use anonymous function for this. e.g.

$this-widget('zii.widgets.grid.CGridView', array(
    'dataProvider' = $dataProvider,
    'columns' = array(
        'title',          // display the 'title' attribute
        'category.name',  // display the 'name' attribute of the 'category' relation
        'content:html',   // display the 'content' attribute as purified HTML
        array(            // display 'create_time' using an expression
            'name' => 'create_time',
            'value' => function($data){
                return date("M j, Y", $data->create_time);
            }
        ),
    ),
));