Professional CodeIgniter

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

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Finally, you create a Submit button with form_submit() , and close a form with form_close() ,

like this:

echo form_submit(‘submit’, ‘search’);

echo form_close();

Thus your entire search form looks like

echo form_open(‘welcome/search’);

echo form_hidden(‘id’, ‘414’);

echo form_hidden(‘searchtype’, ‘basic’);

$data = array(

‘name’ = > ‘searchterm’,

‘id’ = > ‘search’,

‘maxlength’ = > ‘100’,

‘size’ = > ‘50’,

‘style’ = > ‘background-color:#f1f1f1’

)

echo form_input($data);

$values = array(

‘high’ = > ‘high’,

‘medium’ = > ‘medium’,

‘low’ = > ‘low’

);

echo form_dropdown(‘priority’, $values, ‘medium’);

echo form_submit(‘submit’, ‘search’);

echo form_close();

The URL Helper

Another extremely useful helper is the URL helper. You will often be using three functions from this

helper: base_url() , anchor() , and redirect().

The base_url() function prints out the base URL configuration setting that you placed in the /system/

application/config/config.php file. Its chief virtue is that it allows you to create more portable code. For

example, if you need to reference an image in the root directory of the server, you can use base_url()

to make sure that image is always found:

echo base_url(). ‘/images/logo.jpg’;

Similarly useful, the anchor() function helps you create links that are portable from one environment to

another. For example, to create a link to a contact_us page, you would simply pass two arguments to the

anchor() function: the URI followed by the link text.

echo anchor(‘welcome/contact_us’, ‘Contact Us Today!’);