Yii - CGridView 1-to-N Display issues - yii

Question

I've started Yii a month ago and am finding it very intuitive, yet somehow confusing regarding widgets.
In the app i'm developing, although I sometimes use Active Record, I cannot use it's relations as I am using MyIsam (and this cannot be changed) and it has no support for foreign keys.
My issue is I have a CGridView and want to add custom data to it, but am having issues.
It is a 1-to-many relationship with the FK in the right model, but as I said, I cannot use AR's magic.
I have this, an Applications Model and a Profile model. The Profile model has an application FK.
I got a function so when I'm rendering the CGrid I can fetch the name of each Application instead of its *id_app*.
public function appName($id){
$app= Yii::app()->db->createCommand()
->select('name')
->from('tbl_aplications a')
->where('a.id=:id_app', array(':id_app'=>$id))
->queryRow();
return $app;
}
In the auto-generated templates, in the Profile Admin.php view, I got:
$this->widget('zii.widgets.grid.CGridView', array(
'id'=>'profile-application-grid',
'dataProvider'=>$model->search(), //maybe the issue is with this criteria? It is currently 'as-is' after the template generation
'filter'=>$model,
'columns'=>array(
'id',
'name',
array(
'name'=>'id_app',
'header'=>'Aplication',
And here is my issue, I've tried (and all sorts of variations):
'value' => 'ProfileApplication::model()->appName($data->id_app)',
'value' => 'ProfileApplication::model()->appName(id_app)',
'value' => 'ProfileApplication::model()->appName("id_app")',
and all I get is null as a result because it is passing the actual string instead of each row's value. If I pass a direct ID to the function's query, it returns correct value, like ->where('a.id=:id_app', array(':id_app'=>3))
Is it the search criteria that needs to be altered?
I've found similar questions but all of them use AR such as Profile->application or something along those lines and I as I said, I cannot use it due to MyIsam restrictions.
Any tips are appreciated to this newcomer, or links to a solution regarding a similar issue .

Answer 1

To use the value attribute such as that you need, as PrplHaz4 said, a data provider. Then, the $data variable is what has the magic, and it must be used in a string because it is eval()'ed behind the scenes. Here is an example of what you are trying to do:
<?php $this->widget('zii.widgets.grid.CGridView', array(
'id'=>'item-grid',
'dataProvider'=>$model->search(),
'columns'=>array(
array(
'name' => 'id',
'header' => 'Item ID',
),
array(
'name' => 'category_search',
'header' => 'Category',
'value' => '$data->category->name',
),
),
)); ?>
That grabs the name attribute of the related item category model. In the relations() function of the item model:
return array(
'category'=>array(self::BELONGS_TO, 'ItemCategory', 'category_id'),
);
And in the relations() function of the item category model:
return array(
'items'=>array(self::HAS_MANY, 'Item', 'category_id'),
);

Answer 2

You should still be able to use ActiveRecord relations with MyISAM, I beleive the only difference is that with MyISAM, if you use a model generator (gii or cmd line), it will not automatically create the relations. Instead, you will have to specify the relation yourself in the Profile model. This is effectively creating a "soft" fk for use with AR.
public function relations()
{
return array(
'applications'=>array(self::HAS_MANY, 'Applications', 'id_app'),
);
}
That will not entirely solve your problem though, because you will need to use a dataprovider that brings the application models along with the profile models. Something like this:
$this->widget('zii.widgets.grid.CGridView', array(
'id'=>'profile-application-grid',
'dataProvider'=>Profile::model()->with('Applications'),
'filter'=>$model,
'columns'=>array(
'id',
'name',
array(
'name'=>'applications.name',
'header'=>'Application',
),