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How to make Yii checkBoxList selected

How to make Yii checkBoxList selected

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Many people find it hard to make the Yii checkBoxList selected on update view, but believe me in fact its very easy and straight forward. This post will help you in showing user’s last selection by showing them a preselected checkbox list.

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I Suppose you have created a MANY_MANY relation as given below.

Book Model:


'authors' => array(self::MANY_MANY, 'Author', 'authorbook(book_id,author_id)'),

Author Model:


'books' => array(self::MANY_MANY, 'Book', 'authorbook(author_id, book_id)'),

Note: authorbook is the table name containing ids

Make a selected checkBoxList


$books = CHtml::listData(Book::model()->findAll(), 'id', 'name');
$selected_keys = array_keys(CHtml::listData( $model->books, 'id' , 'id'));
echo CHtml::checkBoxList('Author[books][]', $selected_keys, $books);

checkBoxList function is taking three parameters.

  • Field name
  • Array of models ids those were previously selected
  • Options data

2nd parameter is important here, because it makes the checkBoxList selected.