how to use drop down list of a cgrid view in yii?

Hi I know this should be really simple but am just too new to php and yii.SO please bear with me . I have a table named thefriends which has columns(id,thepals,address,phone numbers). Now the admin page uses a cgrid view to list all these friends in the usual format. I want the text boxes to be replaced by drop down menus. I know it can be done by using the following code in views/Thefriends/admin.php

'columns'=>array(

  'id',

  'array'(

   'name'='thepals',

   'filter'=array(1=>'alice',2=>'jenna'),

           )

   'address',

   'phonenumbers')

But as you see I have to populate the values myself, instead I want all the values to be prepopulated from the particular column in the table… please help…

Maybe send them from your controller:

public function actionSomething(){

  $criteria = new CDbCriteria;

  $criteria->condition...

  ...


  $dp = new CActiveDataProvider('Model', array('criteria' => $criteria))

 

  $c = clone $criteria;

  $c->select = 'id, value';

  $f = Model::model()->findAll($c);

  $filter = array();

  foreach($f as $m){

    $filter[$m->id] = $m->value;

  }

  

  $this->render('view', array(

    'dp'=> $dp,

    'filter' => $filter,

  );


}

[size="1"]Note: totally untested and written in the forum editor[/size]