Chapter 1, Introduction and Shared Project Resources, introduces you to this book and documents an initial development environment—installing Twitter Bootstrap, installing CodeIgniter, and developing a few shared common resources used by all chapters throughout the book.

Chapter 2, A URL Shortener, talks about creating an application that allows a user to enter a URL. The application will encode this URL and generate a new, shorter URL with a unique code appended to it—this will then be saved to a database. This URL will be offered to the user for them to distribute and use. Once it is clicked on, the application we will develop will look at the URL, find the unique code in that URL, and look for it in the database. If found, the application will load the original URL and redirect the user to it.

Chapter 3, Discussion Forum, talks about creating an application that will allow users to create an initial question or proposition. This question will be displayed on a type of notice board; this is the beginning of a discussion thread. Other users are able to click on these users' discussions and reply to them should they wish.

Chapter 4, Creating a Photo-sharing Application, talks about creating a small application that will allow a user to upload an image. A unique URL is then generated and saved to the database along with details of the uploaded file. It is offered to the user for them to distribute. Once the URL is clicked on, the uploaded image is fetched from the filesystem and displayed to the user.

Chapter 5, Creating a Newsletter Signup, contains a project that allows a user to register to a database of contacts, in this case, a database of newsletter signups. The user can amend their settings (the settings can be anything you wish: the type of e-mail content they wish to receive or whether they wish to receive HTML or text-only e-mails). The application even supports unsubscribing from future newsletters.

Chapter 6, Creating an Authentication System, contains an application to manage users in a system you might develop and is perhaps the largest chapter in the book. A simple CRUD environment is supplied, allowing you to add, edit, and delete users. In turn, users can register themselves and even reset their password should they forget it.

Chapter 7, Creating an E-Commerce Site, talks about a small but concise e-commerce application that utilizes CodeIgniter's Cart class to support a simple shop. Users can filter products via different categories, add products to their cart, amend items in the carts (adjust item quantities), or remove items from their cart altogether.

Chapter 8, Creating a To-do List, talks about creating an application that allows a user to create tasks that they need to complete. Tasks can be given a due date, that is, a kind of deadline date. The tasks are displayed in an HTML table. The rows of late tasks are given a red background color to indicate their importance. Complete tasks can be set as done and are indicated as being done by being struck through. Finally, tasks can be deleted to remove old and unwanted items.

Chapter 9, Creating a Job Board, talks about creating a job board. Users are encouraged to post an advert on the job board by filling in an HTML form. The contents of the form are validated and added to a database of current available jobs. Other users looking for work can search for these jobs. These users can search through all jobs or enter a search query to see whether a specific job exists.

The following is what you need:

In short, this book is anyone; you don't have to have previous CodeIgniter experience—however, this will obviously help. That said, this book isn't really aimed at the beginner, but that is by no means a barrier; don't forget, CodeIgniter is an easy-to-use framework and can be picked up quite easily.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "Create or open a .htaccess file."

A block of code is set as follows:

$this->load->model('Urls_model');
if ($res = $this->Urls_model->save_url($data)) {
  $page_data['success_fail'] = 'success'; 
  $page_data['encoded_url'] = $res; 
} else {
  $page_data['success_fail'] = 'fail'; 
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE) {
     // Set initial values for the view
$page_data = array('success_fail'   => null,
                   'encoded_url'    => false);

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

user@server:/path/to/codeigniter$ php tools/spark install -v1.0.0 example-spark

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Enter the following command and click on OK."

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