"Invalid parameter number: parameter was not defined" Inserting data

Just to provide an answer - because this error is pretty common - here are a few causes:

1) The :parameter name does not match the bind by mistake (typo?). This is what happened here. He has :alias in the SQL statement, but bound :username. So when the param binding was attempted, Yii/PDO could not find :username in the sql statement, meaning it was "one parameter short" and threw an error.

2) Completely forgetting to add the bindValue() for a parameter. This is easier to do in Yii other constructs like $critera, where you have an array or params ($criteria->params = array(':bind1'=>'test', ':bind2'=>'test)).

3) Weird conflicts with CDataProvider Pagination and/or Sorting when using together and joins. There is no specific, easy way to characterize this, but when using complex queries in CDataProviders I have had weird issues with parameters getting dropped and this error occurring.

One very helpful way to troubleshoot these issues in Yii is to enable parameter logging in your config file. Add this to your db array in your config file:

'enableParamLogging'=>true,

And make sure the CWebLogRoute route is set up in your log section. This will print out the query that gave and error, and all of the parameters it was attempting to bind. Super helpful!

May be you are trying to bind a param within single quotes instead of letting it does the work for you.

Compare:

Model::model()->findAll("t.description ilike '%:filter%'", array(':filter' => $filter));

With:

Model::model()->findAll("t.description ilike :filter", array(':filter' => '%' . $filter . '%'));

A cause of this error for me not covered above is when you're dealing with a dynamic array of parameters if you unset any params, you need to reindex before passing them in. The brutal part of this is that your error log doesn't show indexes so it looks like everything is right. Eg:

SELECT id WHERE x = ?, y = ?, z = ?

Might produce the Log: Invalid parameter number: parameter was not defined with params ("x","y","z")

This looks like it shouldn't be throwing an error, but if the indexes are something like:

0 => x, 1 => y, 4 => z

It considers the last parameter undefined because it's looking for key 2.