Not too long ago, if you wanted to install an extension or some external software for CodeIgniter, you had to hunt it down. You'd need to search for what you were looking for on the Internet and if you were lucky, you would find a blog or someone's personal site, perhaps even a GitHub account or Google code repository where you could download and install a package. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't and whatever you downloaded it almost always needed some level of editing or re-writing.
Fast forward to, now! Thankfully, we have Sparks. Think of Sparks as extensions you can use with CodeIgniter. They're kept in one place (so you don't have to hunt them down across the Internet) at http://www.getsparks.org.
We touched on Sparks in Chapter 1, CodeIgniter Basics, however, let's go into more detail and get you to install and use a couple of Sparks which I have found useful over time.
So, if you haven't installed it until now, install Sparks in your CodeIgniter instance...