Problem with codeigniter 4 Query builder classes - mysql

Question

On terminal, in mysql , running the following query gives this result
mysql> SELECT DISTINCT(city) FROM outlets_data;
+-----------+
| city |
+-----------+
| Paris |
| New York |
| Kolkata |
| Moscow |
| Mumbai |
| Hyderabad |
| Delhi |
| Chennai |
+-----------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
I want to store the names of these cities, in an array, in codeigniter 4 models class file.
Models/DashboardModels.php
<?php
namespace App\Models;
use CodeIgniter\Model;
class DashboardModel extends Model
{
protected $table = 'outlets_data';
protected $primaryKey = 'shop_id';
public function not_defined_yet()
{
$city_names = $this->select('city')->distinct(); // This should be equivalent to "SELECT DISTINCT(city) FROM outlets_data";
return $city_names;
}
}
Controller/Home.php
<?php
namespace App\Controllers;
use App\Models\DashboardModel;
use CodeIgniter\Model;
class Home extends BaseController
{
public function index()
{
$model = new DashboardModel();
$data['undefined'] = $model->not_defined_yet();
echo view('dashboard', $data);
}
}
Views/Dashboard.php
<?php echo "<pre>"; print_r($undefined); echo "</pre>"; ?>
I expect to get names of the cities in output array, but I am getting whole database as associative array.

Answer 1

Your function should be:
public function not_defined_yet()
{
$city_names = $this->select('city')->distinct(); // This should be equivalent to "SELECT DISTINCT(city) FROM outlets_data";
return $this;
}
Then your function be
$data['undefined'] = $model->not_defined_yet()->findAll();
Other way you can do it is loading a new instance of the database object.
public function not_defined_yet()
{
$db = \Config\Database::connect();
$builder = $db->table('outlets_data');
$city_names = $builder->select('city')->distinct();
return $city_names->resultArray();
}
You can even remove the function all together and in your controller do this:
$data['undefined'] = $model->select('city')->distinct()->findAll();
This would get the same exact result.