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.

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CodeIgniter 1.7
Nov, 2009 | 300 pages
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Table of Contents (21 chapters)
CodeIgniter 1.7
CodeIgniter 1.7
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Introduction to CodeIgniter
Introduction to CodeIgniter
What can CodeIgniter do for you?
What CI doesn't do
Yes, but…what is CodeIgniter? What are frameworks?
Comparing CI to other open source solutions (CakePHP and Joomla!)
License
Summary
2
Setting up a CodeIgniter Site
Setting up a CodeIgniter Site
Prerequisites
Installing CodeIgniter
Summary
3
Navigating Your Site
Navigating Your Site
MVC: Model-View-Controller
Summary
4
Using CI to Simplify Databases
Using CI to Simplify Databases
Configuration settings
Designing the database for our site
Active Record
Summary
Chapter appendix: MySQL query to set up the website's database
5
Simplifying HTML Pages and Forms
Simplifying HTML Pages and Forms
Writing a view
Long and short PHP syntax and other CodeIgniter style guidelines
Nesting views
Practical issues of site architecture
CI's form helper—entering data
My display model
CI's form validation class: Checking data easily
Summary
6
Simplifying Sessions and Security
Simplifying Sessions and Security
Continuing with our practical site using CI
Security/Sessions: Using another CI library class
Isn't there anything already built?
Security
Summary
7
CodeIgniter and Objects
CodeIgniter and Objects
Object-oriented programming
Summary
8
Improving Our Application with Third-Party Code
Improving Our Application with Third-Party Code
Creating a helper
Creating a library
Summary
9
Using CI to Communicate
Using CI to Communicate
Using the FTP class to test remote files
Machines talking to machines again: XML-RPC
Talking to humans for a change—the email class
Twitter
Summary
10
How CI Helps to Provide Dynamic Information
How CI Helps to Provide Dynamic Information
The date helper—converting and localizing dates
Working with text—the text helper
Making HTML tables the easy way—the Table class
Caching pages
Summary
11
Using CI to Handle Files and Images
Using CI to Handle Files and Images
The file helper
The download helper
The file upload class and CI's image class
CI's image class
Easy file compression with CI's zip class
Summary
12
Moving Your Site to the WWW
Moving Your Site to the WWW
Errors and error pages
So, should we update if a new version of CI comes out?
Summary
13
CRUD—or Putting It All Together
CRUD—or Putting It All Together
Building our CRUD controller, model, and views
Upgrading our CRUD
Summary
14
The Verdict on CI
The Verdict on CI
Organizing the files of our site
Organizing the logic of our site
Centralized configuration
Code conventions
Database tools
Simpler and more powerful code
Adding security to our site
Making our site more scalable and our code more reusable
Documentation and community
Summarizing all that CI offers
Summary
15
Resources and Extensions
Resources and Extensions
CI's user forums
Invoicing
Additional resources
Summary
Appendix
Appendix
What we need to use the library
Adding products to the cart
Showing the cart to our clients
Summary

Practical issues of site architecture

Wait a moment, you generated the CSS stylesheet address dynamically in your header_view: 

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="<?php echo "$base/$css";?>">

This means that the controller had to produce this data, which is only relevant to how the information is displayed. But we've just said the controller shouldn't know or care about that. Isn't that going right in the face of the "loose coupling" principle, we just set? What's more, generating this information dynamically requires several operations:

  1. 1. The controller has to look it up in the config file.

  2. 2. The controller has to package it in the $data array and pass it to the view.

  3. 3. The view has to extract the single variables $base and $css and look up their values.

Seems like a roundabout way of doing things. Why not just embed the data statically in the view?

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.mysite.com/mystylesheet.css";">

The advantage of building...

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