Yii: Using CDbCriteria with custom variable in model - yii

Question

I'm trying to search based on full_name, which is a concatenation of first_name and last_name, but I keep getting an error.
This is what my controller looks like:
$criteria = new CDbCriteria;
$criteria->addSearchCondition('full_name',$customer_search);
$customers = Customer::model()->findAll($criteria);
In my Customer model, I have a method that should return the full_name:
public function getFull_name() {
return $this->first_name.' '.$this->last_name;
}
But, I get this error:
CDbCommand failed to execute the SQL statement: SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'full_name' in 'where clause'. The SQL statement executed was: SELECT * FROM `customer` `t` WHERE full_name LIKE :ycp0
I need to be able to search both the first_name and last_name, what do I need to change to make this work?

Answer 1

You cannot use "calculated" columns in your query. You will simply have to rewrite the criteria so that they only check columns that physically exist in the database.
Since you want to find people where part of either their first or last name matches you will have to enclose the search term in percent signs (see MySql documentation for LIKE) and specify the second condition with OR:
$criteria = new CDbCriteria;
$criteria->addSearchCondition('first_name', $customer_search);
$criteria->addSearchCondition('last_name', $customer_search, true, "OR");
$customers = Customer::model()->findAll($criteria);