Yii2 virtual attribute out of an attribute of a SqlDataProvider

My AddressController:

public function actionIndex() {
    $searchModel = new AddressSearch;
    $dataProvider = $searchModel->search($_GET);

    return $this->render('index', [
        'dataProvider' => $dataProvider,
        'searchModel' => $searchModel,
    ]);
}

My model AddressSearch:

class AddressSearch extends Model {

    public function search($params) {
        $dataProvider = new SqlDataProvider([
            'sql' => '
                SELECT
                    name
                FROM...

View:

GridView::widget([
    'dataProvider' => $dataProvider,
    'filterModel' => $searchModel,
    'columns' => [
        'name2',

I have an attribute called name in this dataProvider. I would like to create a new virtual attribute called name2 out of name by preg_replace()-ing a few parts of it. The function itself is working. I have tried a lot of different things, but I still can't make it to fill the attribute name2 with data. name2 is always empty. Can you please point me to the right direction? Many thanks!

UPDATE: based on the brilliant ideas of @Imaginaroom and @rob006 I've done the following:

moved getName2() and the attributes I'm filling with SqlDataProvider from base model Address to AddressSearch
deleted the empty base model Address because I don't need it anyway. Less is more!

in search() I've added:

foreach ($dataProvider->getModels() as $row) {
    $model = new AddressSearch;
    $model->setAttributes($row, false);
    $models[] = $model;
}
$dataProvider->setModels($models);

It works! Many thanks guys! It's fantastic that you are there and help!!!

Solution

The problem is that you're using SqlDataProvider which returns rows from the table as array instead of model instance. So that's why your getter (virtual-attribute) does not work in GridView - GridView does not work on Address model instance, but on raw array without name2 field.

You should change your SearchModel to use ActiveQuery:

$dataProvider = ActiveDataProvider([
    'query' => Address::find()->select(['name']) //and whatever your query contains besides this
])
...

UPDATE: If you don't want to do it like this, you can add your logic directly in GridView like so:

GridView::widget([
    'dataProvider' => $dataProvider,
    'filterModel' => $searchModel,
    'columns' => [
        [
            'header' => 'Name 2',
            'value' => function($model) {
                if (isset($this->_name2)) {
                    return $this->_name2;
                }

                return $this->_name2 = preg_replace([...
            }
        ]