How do I fix user input before validating / saving?

It would probably be easier if you used CFilterValidator

to automatically convert the input from a string to a float when validation occurs; the rest must take care of themselves.

So your model would have

public function rules() {
    return array(
        array('price', 'filter', 'filter' => 'convertToFloat'),
    );
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

and the filter function will look like

function convertToFloat($value) {
    return floatval(trim(str_replace(',', '.', $value)));
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

You can also specify the filtering function as any valid callable , for example make it a model method and specify it as

'filter' => array($this, 'convertToFloat')