Collecting Tabular Input
Sometimes we want to collect user input in a batch mode. That is, the user can enter the information for multiple model instances and submit them all at once. We call this tabular input because the input fields are often presented in an HTML table.
To work with tabular input, we first need to create or populate an array
of model instances, depending on whether we are inserting or updating the
data. We then retrieve the user input data from the $_POST variable and
assign it to each model. A slight difference from single model input is
that we retrieve the input data using $_POST['ModelClass'][$i] instead of
$_POST['ModelClass'].
Having the action ready, we need to work on the batchUpdate view to
display the input fields in an HTML table.
Note in the above that we use "[$i]name" instead of "name" as the
second parameter when calling CHtml::activeTextField.
If there are any validation errors, the corresponding input fields will be highlighted automatically, just like the single model input we described earlier on.