Professional CodeIgniter

Chapter 6: Creating a Dashboard

162

Figure 6-5

Creating the Category Management Tools

Now it ’ s time to create a simple form that will allow Claudia to create a new category whenever she

wants. Before jumping into the code, you have to know that this new create() function will pull

double duty.

If you need a quick reminder of how to build forms in CodeIgniter, refer to ” The Form Helper ” section in

Chapter 3.

First, it checks to see if there are any incoming POST data (and specifically, a name field). If there are

POST data, it runs the addCategory() function in the MCats model. You haven ’ t created that function

yet, but you will.

If no POST data are detected, it displays the dashboard view, loading the admin_cat_create view into

$data[‘main’]. Also, it loads the top - level categories using getTopCategories(). Don ’ t worry —

you haven ’ t created this function yet.

Before you start working in the model to create those two functions, create your create() function:

function create(){

if ($this- > input- > post(‘name’)){

$this- > MCats- > addCategory();

$this- > session- > set_flashdata(‘message’,’Category created’);