Question

I would like to know why the framework might have this strange behavior.

If I define the relation in my Event model as weird or any other name besides interest, it works properly getting an object of the class Interest.

public function relations() 
{
    return array_merge(
        parent::relations(),
        array(
            'weird' => array(self::BELONGS_TO, 'Interest', 'interest_id'),
        ));
}

But if I change the name to interest it returns null

public function relations()
{
    return array(
        'interest' => array(self::BELONGS_TO, 'Interest', 'interest_id'),
    );
}

So simply changing the name to interest means the relation will return null

Answer 1

Do you have any variables on the Event called interest you can’t override native class variables with Yii specials like relations and magic methods. If not then something stranger is going on here.