Professional CodeIgniter

Chapter 3: A 10,000 - Foot View of CodeIgniter

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The fourth $autoload option, model , allows you to autoload models. This is a new feature of

CodeIgniter 1.6. You are going to create two basic models for Claudia ’ s Kids below, one that handles

product data and the other that handles category data. When you create those two models, you ’ ll have

the opportunity to come back to this file and autoload them.

Finally, the fifth $autoload option, config , is where you would list any custom configuration files. As it ’ s

unlikely that you ’ ve created any of those at this point, leave it blank.

routes.php

The routes.php file lets you remap URI requests to specific controller functions. For example, you may

have a controller named site with a function named index. The URI for this controller/function

combination might be :

http://www.example.com/site/index

Furthermore, if your site controller had a pages function that accepted a numeric ID for database

lookup, the URI might look like this:

http://www.example.com/site/pages/4

In some cases, you might want to remap one or more of these default routes. For example, the second

example might be better displayed as this:

http://www.example.com/about_us/

In that case, your routes.php file would contain a rule like this:

$route[‘about_us’] = “site/pages/4”;

For right now, though, this kind of manipulation falls under “ advanced usage, ” so don ’ t worry too much

about it. However, please do note that this kind of thing is possible. Also, be aware that two “ reserved

routes ” exist: default_controller and scaffolding_trigger.

$route[‘default_controller’] = “welcome”;

The default_controller route tells CodeIgniter which controller should be loaded if no controller is

identified. For simplicity ’ s sake, keep this setting at welcome, because you ’ re going to create a welcome

controller for the project associated with this book.

CodeIgniter Libraries

CodeIgniter libraries help you do your job faster and more efficiently. Each library is really a PHP class

with various methods that you can use once the library is loaded by a controller. Some classes are so

useful and so ubiquitous that you might as well autoload them (such as the database and session

libraries).