Book Image

CodeIgniter 1.7

Book Image

CodeIgniter 1.7

Overview of this book

CodeIgniter (CI) is a powerful open-source PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. CodeIgniter is an MVC framework, similar in some ways to the Rails framework for Ruby, and is designed to enable, not overwhelm. This book explains how to work with CodeIgniter in a clear logical way. It is not a detailed guide to the syntax of CodeIgniter, but makes an ideal complement to the existing online CodeIgniter user guide, helping you grasp the bigger picture and bringing together many ideas to get your application development started as smoothly as possible. This book will start you from the basics, installing CodeIgniter, understanding its structure and the MVC pattern. You will also learn how to use some of the most important CodeIgniter libraries and helpers, upload it to a shared server, and take care of the most common problems. If you are new to CodeIgniter, this book will guide you from bottom to top. If you are an experienced developer or already know about CodeIgniter, here you will find ideas and code examples to compare to your own.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
CodeIgniter 1.7
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
Preface

Summary


We've looked at ways in which CI generates "views", and how it allows you to create "mini-views", which you can nest inside other views. This means, you can set up a title page or a part of your display once and use it over and over again, keeping your display separated from your content.

We've also seen how CI helps you in the task of writing HTML forms, with a set of helpers that simplify the process and cut down on actual coding.

Lastly, we've looked at CI's validation class, which is a powerful tool for keeping an eye on what your users actually try to enter. Nothing's perfect, but this goes a long way towards stopping users form entering rubbish, or trying to exploit security holes in your site. It also looks much more professional when your site politely but firmly catches out users' mistakes, rather than silently accepting meaningless entries.

On the way, we've also looked at the MVC process again, and made a choice between the strict application of MVC principles and deliberately...