I'm in a need to use beforeFind() in a child class of CActiveRecord.
Basically, I need to convert some data from before actual search in the DB is performed.
How do I alter the about-to-occur-find-operation that is about to take place, inside beforeFind()? Messing with $this attributes is not useful since its not even populated, which is a little surprise.
I've seen that the documentation mentions a "hidden CDbCriteria parameter" but I just couldn't guess how to use it... . Unfortunately, the documentation on this subject is slim.
What I need to do is rather simple: I've got a table column for storing IP addresses. The most efficient design from scalability perspective, is to use a VARBINARY(16) data type for the column. See for example this SO question page (and answers) on this.
So, the cleanest solution would be to have beforeFind(), afterFind() and beforeSave() work transparently for the users.
In the code stack, the IP addresses would be the normal dotted-quad and in the DB level, its whatever that goes into the field after utilizing PHP's inet_pton() method in those after/before hook methods.
It was supposed to be cool. and it is cool - with afterFind() and beforeSave(), where I have the ip_address attribute of the object at hand, at the mercy of my uber-manipulation powers.
Here's the point, and the need: thing is, I don't know how to achieve that on beforeFind(). I cannot do a blind mergeWith() as I need to check if ip_address attribute is part of the original criteria, and that I don't know how to do.
Help! TIA :)
