CodeIgniter

About the Tutorial

CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for developers
who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. CodeIgniter
was created by EllisLab, and is now a project of the British Columbia Institute of
Technology.

Audience
This tutorial has been prepared for developers who would like to learn the art of developing
websites using CodeIgniter. It provides a complete understanding of this framework.

Prerequisites
Before you start proceeding with this tutorial, we assume that you are already exposed to
HTML, Core PHP, and Advance PHP. We have used CodeIgniter version 3.0.1 in all the
examples.

Copyright & Disclaimer

Copyright 2015 by Tutorials Point (I) Pvt. Ltd.

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We strive to update the contents of our website and tutorials as timely and as precisely as
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Ltd. provides no guarantee regarding the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of our
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in this tutorial, please notify us at contact@tutorialspoint.com

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CodeIgniter

Table of Contents
About the Tutorial .................................................................................................................................... i

Audience .................................................................................................................................................. i

Prerequisites ............................................................................................................................................ i

Copyright & Disclaimer............................................................................................................................. i

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... ii

1. CODEIGNITER – OVERVIEW ................................................................................................. 1

2. INSTALLING CODEIGNITER ................................................................................................... 3

3. APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE .............................................................................................. 4

Directory Structure.................................................................................................................................. 5

4. CODEIGNITER – MVC FRAMEWORK..................................................................................... 8

5. CODEIGNITER – BASIC CONCEPTS........................................................................................ 9

Controllers .............................................................................................................................................. 9

Views .................................................................................................................................................... 11

Models .................................................................................................................................................. 13

Helpers .................................................................................................................................................. 15

Routing ................................................................................................................................................. 16

6. CODEIGNITER – CONFIGURATION ..................................................................................... 19

Configuring Base URL ............................................................................................................................ 19

Database Configuration......................................................................................................................... 19

Autoload Configuration ......................................................................................................................... 21

7. WORKING WITH DATABASE ............................................................................................... 23

Connecting to a Database ..................................................................................................................... 23

Inserting a Record ................................................................................................................................. 23

Updating a Record................................................................................................................................. 24
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Deleting a Record .................................................................................................................................. 25

Selecting a Record ................................................................................................................................. 26

Closing a Connection ............................................................................................................................. 26

Example ................................................................................................................................................ 26

8. CODEIGNITER – LIBRARIES ................................................................................................. 33

Library Classes ....................................................................................................................................... 33

Creating Libraries .................................................................................................................................. 34

9. ERROR HANDLING ............................................................................................................. 37

10. FILE UPLOADING................................................................................................................ 39

11. SENDING EMAIL................................................................................................................. 43

12. FORM VALIDATION ............................................................................................................ 49

13. SESSION MANAGEMENT.................................................................................................... 55

14. FLASHDATA ....................................................................................................................... 58

15. TEMPDATA ........................................................................................................................ 61

16. COOKIE MANAGEMENT ..................................................................................................... 65

17. COMMON FUNCTIONS ...................................................................................................... 68

18. PAGE CACHING .................................................................................................................. 71

19. PAGE REDIRECTION ........................................................................................................... 73

20. APPLICATION PROFILING ................................................................................................... 75

21. BENCHMARKING ............................................................................................................... 77

22. ADDING JS AND CSS........................................................................................................... 80

23. INTERNATIONALIZATION ................................................................................................... 83

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24. CODEIGNITER – SECURITY ................................................................................................. 88

XSS Prevention ...................................................................................................................................... 88

SQL Injection Prevention ....................................................................................................................... 88

Hiding PHP Errors .................................................................................................................................. 89

CSRF Prevention .................................................................................................................................... 90

Password Handling ................................................................................................................................ 90

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1. CODEIGNITER – OVERVIEW CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is an application development framework, which can be used to develop websites,

using PHP. It is an Open Source framework. It has a very rich set of functionality, which will
increase the speed of website development work.

If you know PHP well, then CodeIgniter will make your task easier. It has a very rich set of
libraries and helpers. By using CodeIgniter, you will save a lot of time, if you are developing
a website from scratch. Not only that, a website built in CodeIgniter is secure too, as it has
the ability to prevent various attacks that take place through websites.

CodeIgniter Features
Some of the important features of CodeIgniter are listed below:

 Model-View-Controller Based System

 Extremely Light Weight

 Full Featured database classes with support for several platforms.

 Query Builder Database Support

 Form and Data Validation

 Security and XSS Filtering

 Session Management

 Email Sending Class. Supports Attachments, HTML/Text email, multiple protocols

(sendmail, SMTP, and Mail) and more.
 Image Manipulation Library (cropping, resizing, rotating, etc.). Supports GD,
ImageMagick, and NetPBM
 File Uploading Class

 FTP Class

 Localization

 Pagination

 Data Encryption

 Benchmarking

 Full Page Caching

 Error Logging

 Application Profiling

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 Calendaring Class

 User Agent Class

 Zip Encoding Class

 Template Engine Class

 Trackback Class

 XML-RPC Library

 Unit Testing Class

 Search-engine Friendly URLs

 Flexible URI Routing

 Support for Hooks and Class Extensions

 Large library of “helper” functions

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2. INSTALLING CODEIGNITER CodeIgniter

It is very easy to install CodeIgniter. Just follow the steps given below:

 Step-1: Download the CodeIgniter from the link http://www.codeigniter.com/download

 Step-2: Unzip the folder.

 Step-3: Upload all files and folders to your server.

 Step-4: After uploading all the files to your server, visit the URL of your server, e.g.,
www.domain-name.com.

On visiting the URL, you will see the following screen:

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3. APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE CodeIgniter

The architecture of CodeIgniter application is shown below.

Figure: CodeIgniter Application Flowchart

 As shown in the figure, whenever a request comes to CodeIgniter, it will first go to

index.php page.

 In the second step, Routing will decide whether to pass this request to step-3 for
caching or to pass this request to step-4 for security check.

 If the requested page is already in Caching, then Routing will pass the request to
step-3 and the response will go back to the user.

 If the requested page does not exist in Caching, then Routing will pass the requested
page to step-4 for Security checks.

 Before passing the request to Application Controller, the Security of the submitted
data is checked. After the Security check, the Application Controller loads
necessary Models, Libraries, Helpers, Plugins and Scripts and pass it on to View.

 The View will render the page with available data and pass it on for Caching. As the
requested page was not cached before so this time it will be cached in Caching, to
process this page quickly for future requests.

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Directory Structure
The image given below shows the directory structure of the CodeIgniter.

Figure: Directory Structure

CodeIgniter directory structure is divided into 3 folders:

 Application
 System
 User_guide

Application
As the name indicates the Application folder contains all the code of your application that you
are building. This is the folder where you will develop your project. The Application folder
contains several other folders, which are explained below:

 Cache: This folder contains all the cached pages of your application. These cached
pages will increase the overall speed of accessing the pages.

 Config: This folder contains various files to configure the application. With the help of
config.php file, user can configure the application. Using database.php file, user can
configure the database of the application.

 Controllers: This folder holds the controllers of your application. It is the basic part
of your application.

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 Core: This folder will contain base class of your application.

 Helpers: In this folder, you can put helper class of your application.
 Hooks: The files in this folder provide a means to tap into and modify the inner
workings of the framework without hacking the core files.

 Language: This folder contains language related files.

 Libraries: This folder contains files of the libraries developed for your application.

 Logs: This folder contains files related to the log of the system.

 Models: The database login will be placed in this folder.

 Third_party: In this folder, you can place any plugins, which will be used for your
application.

 Views: Application’s HTML files will be placed in this folder.

System
This folder contains CodeIgniter core codes, libraries, helpers and other files, which help make
the coding easy. These libraries and helpers are loaded and used in web app development.

This folder contains all the CodeIgniter code of consequence, organized into various folders:

 Core: This folder contains CodeIgniter’s core class. Do not modify anything here. All
of your work will take place in the application folder. Even if your intent is to extend
the CodeIgniter core, you have to do it with hooks, and hooks live in the application
folder.

 Database: The database folder contains core database drivers and other database
utilities.

 Fonts: The fonts folder contains font related information and utilities.

 Helpers: The helpers folder contains standard CodeIgniter helpers (such as date,
cookie, and URL helpers).

 Language: The language folder contains language files. You can ignore it for now.

 Libraries: The libraries folder contains standard CodeIgniter libraries (to help you with
e-mail, calendars, file uploads, and more). You can create your own libraries or extend
(and even replace) standard ones, but those will be saved in the
application/libraries directory to keep them separate from the standard CodeIgniter
libraries saved in this particular folder.

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User_guide
This is your user guide to CodeIgniter. It is basically, the offline version of user guide on
CodeIgniter website. Using this, one can learn the functions of various libraries, helpers and
classes. It is recommended to go through this user guide before building your first web app
in CodeIgniter.

Beside these three folders, there is one more important file named “index.php”. In this file,
we can set the application environment and error level and we can define system and
application folder name. It is recommended, not to edit these settings if you do not have
enough knowledge about what you are going to do.

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4. CODEIGNITER – MVC FRAMEWORK CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) development pattern. MVC is

a software approach that separates application logic from presentation. In practice, it permits
your web pages to contain minimal scripting since the presentation is separate from the PHP
scripting.

Figure: CodeIgniter – MVC Framework


 The Model represents your data structures. Typically, your model classes will contain
functions that help you retrieve, insert and update information in your database.

 The View is information that is being presented to a user. A View will normally be a
web page, but in CodeIgniter, a view can also be a page fragment like a header or
footer. It can also be an RSS page, or any other type of “page”.

 The Controller serves as an intermediary between the Model, the View, and any
other resources needed to process the HTTP request and generate a web page.

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5. CODEIGNITER – BASIC CONCEPTS CodeIgniter

Controllers
A controller is a simple class file. As the name suggests, it controls the whole application by
URI.

Creating a Controller
First, go to application/controllers folder. You will find two files there, index.html and
Welcome.php. These files come with the CodeIgniter.

Keep these files as they are. Create a new file under the same path named “Test.php”. Write
the following code in that file:

<?php
class Test extends CI_Controller {

public function index()

{
echo "Hello World!";
}
}
?>

The Test class extends an in-built class called CI_Controller. This class must be extended
whenever you want to make your own Controller class.

Calling a Controller
The above controller can be called by URI as follows:

http://www.your-domain.com/index.php/test

Notice the word “test” in the above URI after index.php. This indicates the class name of
controller. As we have given the name of the controller “Test”, we are writing “test” after
the index.php. The class name must start with uppercase letter but we need to write
lowercase letter when we call that controller by URI. The general syntax for calling the
controller is as follows:

http://www.your-domain.com/index.php/controller/method-name

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CodeIgniter

Creating & Calling Constructor Method

Let us modify the above class and create another method named “hello”.

<?php
class Test extends CI_Controller {

public function index()

{
echo "This is default function.";
}

public function hello()

{
echo "This is hello function.";
}
}
?>

We can execute the above controller in the following three ways:

1. http://www.your-domain.com/index.php/test
2. http://www.your-domain.com/index.php/test/index
3. http://www.your-domain.com/index.php/test/hello

After visiting the first URI in the browser, we get the output as shown in the picture given
below. As you can see, we got the output of the method “index”, even though we did not
pass the name of the method the URI. We have used only controller name in the URI. In such
situations, the CodeIgniter calls the default method “index”.

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CodeIgniter

Visiting the second URI in the browser, we get the same output as shown in the above picture.
Here, we have passed method’s name after controller’s name in the URI. As the name of the
method is “index”, we are getting the same output.

Visiting the third URI in the browser, we get the output as shown in picture given below. As
you can see, we are getting the output of the method “hello” because we have passed “hello”
as the method name, after the name of the controller “test” in the URI.

Points to Remember:
 The name of the controller class must start with an uppercase letter.
 The controller must be called with lowercase letter.
 Do not use the same name of the method as your parent class, as it will override
parent class’s functionality.

Views
This can be a simple or complex webpage, which can be called by the controller. The webpage
may contain header, footer, sidebar etc. View cannot be called directly. Let us create a simple
view. Create a new file under application/views with name “test.php” and copy the below
given code in that file.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>CodeIgniter View Example</title>
</head>
<body>
CodeIgniter View Example
</body>
</html>

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Change the code of application/controllers/test.php file as shown in the below.

Loading the View

The view can be loaded by the following syntax:

$this->load->view('name');

Where name is the view file, which is being rendered. If you have planned to store the view
file in some directory then you can use the following syntax:

$this->load->view('directory-name/name');

It is not necessary to specify the extension as php, unless something other than .php is used.

The index() method is calling the view method and passing the “test” as argument to view()
method because we have stored the html coding in “test.php” file under
application/views/test.php.

<?php
class Test extends CI_Controller {

public function index()

{
$this->load->view('test');
}
}
?>

Here is the output of the above code:

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The following flowchart illustrates of how everything works:

http://www.your-domain.com/index.php/test

The above URI will first call the index.php file in your CodeIgniter folder.

Controller
The index.php file will call the class application/controllers/Test.php. As the method
name hasn't been passed in the URI, the default index() method will be called which will
indirectly call the application/views/test.php file.

Views
$this->load->view('test') will render the view file application/views/test.php and
generates the output.

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Models
Models classes are designed to work with information in the database. As an example, if you
are using CodeIgniter to manage users in your application then you must have model class,
which contains functions to insert, delete, update and retrieve your users’ data.

Creating Model Class

Model classes are stored in application/models directory. Following code shows how to
create model class in CodeIgniter.

<?php
Class Model_name extends CI_Model{

Public function __construct()

{
parent::__construct();
}
}
?>

Where Model_name is the name of the model class that you want to give. Each model class
must inherit the CodeIgniter’s CI_Model class. The first letter of the model class must be in
capital letter. Following is the code for users’ model class.

<?php
Class zzzextends CI_Model{

Public function __construct()

{
parent::__construct();
}

}
?>

The above model class must be saved as User_model.php. The class name and file name must
be same.

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Loading Model
Model can be called in controller. Following code can be used to load any model.

$this->load->model('model_name');

Where model_name is the name of the model to be loaded. After loading the model you can
simply call its method as shown below.

$this->model_name->method();

Auto-loading Models
There may be situations where you want some model class throughout your application. In
such situations, it is better if we autoload it.

As shown in the above figure, pass the name of the model in the array that you want to
autoload and it will be autoloaded, while system is in initialization state and is accessible
throughout the application.

Helpers
As the name suggests, it will help you build your system. It is divided into small functions to
serve different functionality. A number of helpers are available in CodeIgniter, which are listed
in the table below. We can build our own helpers too.

Helpers are typically stored in your system/helpers, or application/helpers directory.

Custom helpers are stored in application/helpers directory and systems’ helpers are stored
in system/helpers directory. CodeIgniter will look first in your application/helpers
directory. If the directory does not exist or the specified helper is not located, CodeIgniter
will instead, look in your global system/helpers/ directory. Each helper, whether it is
custom or system helper, must be loaded before using it.

Helper Name Description

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The Array Helper file contains functions that assist in working with
Array Helper
arrays.
The CAPTCHA Helper file contains functions that assist in creating
CAPTCHA Helper
CAPTCHA images.
The Cookie Helper file contains functions that assist in working with
Cookie Helper
cookies.
The Date Helper file contains functions that help you work with
Date Helper
dates.
The Directory Helper file contains functions that assist in working
Directory Helper
with directories.
Download Helper The Download Helper lets you download data to your desktop.
The Email Helper provides some assistive functions for working
Email Helper with Email. For a more robust email solution, see CodeIgniter’s
Email Class.
The File Helper file contains functions that assist in working with
File Helper
files.
The Form Helper file contains functions that assist in working with
Form Helper
forms.
The HTML Helper file contains functions that assist in working with
HTML Helper
HTML.
The Inflector Helper file contains functions that permits you to
Inflector Helper
change words to plural, singular, camel case, etc.
The Language Helper file contains functions that assist in working
Language Helper
with language files.
The Number Helper file contains functions that help you work with
Number Helper
numeric data.
The Path Helper file contains functions that permits you to work
Path Helper
with file paths on the server.
Security Helper The Security Helper file contains security related functions.

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