Customize delete confirmation in GridView

As nearly everything in Yii 2, you are starting from scratch with out-of-the-box solution for displaying models in grids (using yii\grid\GridView). Usually last among columns ($columns) of such grid there is an button column (yii\grid\ActionColumn) that serves basic operations for corresponding row or item. One of such column’s buttons there’s a delete button.

Everything is ready for you, to be used without much effort, but only as long as you are building an English-only application, as translating or customizing delete confirmation in such scenario isn’t a super-easy task. One of a great approaches is given in here: How to create a custom delete button?.

But, it works just great, if you want to customize just a single delete button of a one or maybe two grid view. What about, if you have a grid view for each and every of your data model?

One of two model’s attributes must be provided

Suppose that we have any Yii 2 model with to and from attributes. And we want to make sure that either of them is provided. So we need a logical OR relation between these two attributes.

A slightly modified Stack Overflow example will do the trick:

['from', 'required', 'when' => function($model) {
    return !is_numeric($model->to);
}, 'message' => Yii::t('models', 'Either "to" or "from" must be provided.')],

Using a closure (an anonymous function) is all the “magic” here. We use it as a value $when of property of yii\validators\Validator (actually yii\validators\RequiredValidator in this case).

To basically tell Yii 2 that it must validate whether from does not have null or empty value if, and only if to does not have null or empty value as well.

Adding custom action to yii\rest\ActiveController

This is just a memo for future self of what steps must be undertaken in order to:

• Add a new custom (own) action to given yii\rest\ActiveController and
• Making it accessible for selected routes / verbs / methods

If you’re familiar with the above then you won’t find anything valuable in this article, sorry.

Adding new application to Yii 2 Advanced Project Template

After writing the previous article I have realized that I solved the problem quite wrong. I added the example RESTful app controller to the frontend application in the multi-application Yii 2 Advanced Project Template environment.

I have also realized that the corresponding Yii 2 Guide is very, very poor and limited. It only tells you that you can have many applications (like backend, fronted and console) in the multi-application Yii 2 Advanced Project Template environment. But it leaves you completely guessing on how to actually add new application.

This quick article is my memo to remember steps that must be undertaken in order to achieve this.

The quickest way to add RestAPI to your Yii 2 app. Part 1

The example given in Yii 2 Guide is of a low quality, because it It requires User model based on database, not a file. And the guide mixes two things together:

• Yii 2 Basic Template, which is used in this example, has User model, but based on itself (on a file — list of users is given as an array)
• Yii 2 Advanced Template has User model based on database, but it uses a multi-application concept in the same time and adding REST support, like shown in this example, isn’t possible.

As an effect, people who just starts their journey with Yii 2 and REST are often confused and finds official example not working in their side.

This article deals with this problem and show how to enable REST in Yii 2 Basic Project Template by using some model (database-based) other than User model.

Configure virtual hosts for separated apps in Advanced Project Template

When developing web applications in PHP based on Yii 2’s Advanced Project Template you have a clear separation between two applications:

• Backend — for service’s admins
• Frontend — for regular users

There’s also a separate console application but it isn’t important from web applications perspective as it is not accessed remotely via URL, but rather locally in console.

In local development environment you can separate access to these two applications using various methods:

• Two separate domains — i.e. frontend.localhost and backend.localhost
• Two subdomains — i.e. app.localhost and admin.app.localhost
• Separate port — i.e. app.localhost and app.localhost:8080

This article deals with all three scenarios, but using XAMPP/Apache for Windows only. You must adjust provided examples, if you’re running Apache on different operating system.

Create a non-standard primary key in Yii 2 migration

If you need a typical primary key then use $this->primaryKey() in your migration file. You can also use something like $this->primaryKey(2), if you need a bigger (here int(2)) primary key.

But, what when you need a non-standard primary key, i.e. you want to turn following example SQL code:

CREATE TABLE `country` (
  `code` CHAR(2) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
  `name` CHAR(52) NOT NULL,
  `population` INT(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0'
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

into Yii 2 migration?

Calling:

'code' => $this->primaryKey()->char(2)->notNull()

will fail with error:

Exception: Calling unknown method: yii\db\mysql\ColumnSchemaBuilder::char()

Now, what Qiang?

Pluralized and non-pluralized rules for the same REST controller

The quickest way of adding REST support to your Yii 2 application is to add REST controller to it and configure REST rules. Just a couple of line and framework will do all the dirty stuff for you “behind the scene”.

If you do this then your REST rules will have pluralize property set to true be default meaning that even though you are using controller’s name in singular (i.e. UserController, PostController etc.) your REST URL rules will have it in plural, i.e. GET /posts/12, DELETE /posts/13 etc.

Since I am a purification and perfection maniac, I wasn’t pretty much satisfied with the idea that:

• I have plural routes when fetching, deleting or updating single record (when pluralize = true) or
• I have single GET /post router when fetching all records (when pluralize = false)

In other words, I wanted a solution that will give me:

• Everything in singular (i.e. GET /post/12, PATCH /post/77)
• Except listing all the records, where I will have plural (i.e. GET /posts)

The solution turned out to be quite simple…

Get file’s local path from its URL

I needed some nifty solution in Yii2 that would allow me to delete an image (a file) no matter, if:

• I have an URL that points to it, used by regular user in a browser,
• I have a local path on server, used internally by my Yii application.

Here it is.

Dump current database state to Yii migration

There’s a wonderful extension to Yii 1.x, called database-command, written by the one and only schmunk, which allows you to quickly and easily generate any set of CDbMigrationCommands (actually, entire single migration code) based on current database schema.

This isn’t, of course, the only one out there. There are some others. But I like this one the most, mainly for flexibility (may parameters to suit generated migration file to your needs). However, if this is your first approach to using custom yiic commands, you may get a little bit confused. This article should help you.