CODEWITHSUNDEEP
yii2
Виктор Комягин
Виктор Комягин

Reputation: 101

Yii2: how to perfect separate validate model and save model?

In which case is it better to use the Validate model? Example: I have two model

  1. AgreementForm
  2. Agreement

When I create data - I use 

$model = new AgreementForm();
if ( $model->load( \Yii::$app->request->post() ) && $model->save() ) {
....
}

Code of AgreemtnForm

AgreementForm extemds Model {
......
 public function save() {
   if(!$this->validate()) {
    return null;
   }
   $model = new Agreement();
   $model->content = $this->content;
   if( $model->save() ) {
    return true;
   }
}

But when I update data, I use only that code:

public function actionUpdate( $id ) {

    $model = Agreement::findOne( $id );

    if( $model->load( \Yii::$app->request->post() ) &&  $model->save() ){



        $this->refresh();
    }
    else {
        return $this->render('update', [
            'model' => $model,
        ]);
    }

}

What is the validation model in this case, if I duplicate the validation in another model? Can I only use 1 model?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1133

Answers (1)

Jannes Botis
Jannes Botis

Reputation: 11242

I will try to explain why you should almost always use a Form model to validate your data, providing some cases:

1) Doing 

if( $model->load( \Yii::$app->request->post() ) &&  $model->save() )

could be dangerous, the user can send post data that he was not supposed to. eg. Agreement has a userid column that gets id of the user that created it. If a user, sends this field in the post request, he could potentially change its value. Your form model should define the properties that you expect to be sent.

2) You want to define additional validation for your model based on eg. the user role, the time the Agreement is valid etc. Lets say you have 2 user roles:

  • Retailer
  • Merchant

Retailer can create an Agreement that is 300 characters long and max price 1000, opposed to 700 and 10000 for the merchant. How do you cope with that?

You create 2 different forms:

$user = Yii::$app->user;
if ($user->can('retailer')) {
    $model = new RetailerAgreementForm();
}
else {
    $model = new MerchantAgreementForm();
}
if ( $model->load( \Yii::$app->request->post() ) && $model->save() ) {
....
}

In the form models, you can add the additional validation for your fields:

public function rules()
{
    return [
        ['body', 'string', 'max' => 300],
        ['price', 'integer', 'max'=> 1000],
    ];
}

Using different forms for this I believe is the best option.

3) Your form model fields do not correspond to Database model columns 1 to 1. Consider this example: Your want to save the address of the agreement, street, state and city. You have a list of cities, states and streets. The only thing you want to do with the address is save it and load it, eg. nobody is going to search per city. So you just define a column address(type text) in your table and save the data as a JSON.

Your AgreementForm defines the address as separate fields and validates them accordingly and your Agreement model just validates address to be a string.

Do not duplicate your validation between AgreementForm and Agreement models. They should define different validation rules.

Note: Even if you do not render the form in a view and just post some data, it is good to use a form model to get exactly the fields you want to change and if needed, validate them with additional rules. The only case that I could think to just use the DB model directly is when you want to provide just some basic crud operations for your model.

Upvotes: 1

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