Learn CodeIgniter in 1 Day

By Krishna Rungta

Copyright 2019 - All Rights Reserved – Krishna Rungta

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form whatsoever, electronic, or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval
system without express written, dated and signed permission from the
author.
Table Of Content
Chapter 1: What is CodeIgniter? How does it Work?

1. What is CodeIgniter?
2. CodeIgniter Features
3. How CodeIgniter Works?
4. CodeIgniter Release History

Chapter 2: How to Download & Install CodeIgniter + Composer

[Configuration Included]

1. Download and Install Latest CodeIgniter Framework

2. What is Composer?
3. How to install Composer
4. CodeIgniter Config Files
5. CodeIgniter Configurations
6. How to remove index.php in CodeIgniter

Chapter 3: CodeIgniter Application's FOLDER & FILE Structure

1. Application subdirectories
2. System subdirectories
3. User_guide directory
4. Vendor directory

Chapter 4: CodeIgniter MVC(Model View Controller) Framework with

Example
 1. What is MVC?
2. How MVC frameworks work?
3. CodeIgniter Controller
4. CodeIgniter Model

Chapter 5: CodeIgniter Controllers, Views Routing: Learn with Example App

1. How to create a new CodeIgniter project

2. CodeIgniter Routing
3. Create a Route
4. Create a Controller
5. Create a View

Chapter 6: CodeIgniter Routes: Learn with Example

1. What are Routes?

2. Routes Example
3. Creating URL's for the Application
4. Views

Chapter 7: CodeIgniter Form & Form Validation with Example

1. CodeIgniter Form Helper

2. Example Create Form
3. CodeIgniter Form Validation
4. Adding Form Validation Rules
5. Displaying Form Validation Error Messages
6. Populating Submitted Form Data: Sticky Forms
7. Example Form Validation
Chapter 8: Codeigniter Active Record: Insert, Select, Update, Delete

1. How to use Active Record: Example

2. CodeIgniter Database Configuration
3. CodeIgniter Insert Active Record
4. CodeIgniter Select Active Record
5. CodeIgniter Update Active Record
6. CodeIgniter Delete Active Record

Chapter 9: CodeIgniter Database Tutorial: Create, Update, Delete

1. CodeIgniter Working with Database

2. Database Configuration
3. CodeIgniter Database Models
4. Contacts Manager Views

Chapter 10: Pagination in Codeigniter with Step by Step Example

1. Database configuration
2. CodeIgniter Pagination Database Model
3. CodeIgniter Pagination Routes
4. CodeIgniter Pagination Controller

Chapter 11: How to Set Session in Codeigniter With Example

1. CodeIgniter Session Management

2. When to use sessions?
3. Sending Flash Messages to other pages with CI Sessions
 4. Storing User Data in CI Sessions
5. CodeIgniter Session Views

Chapter 12: How to Upload Image & File in CodeIgniter (with Example)

1. CodeIgniter File Upload

2. Uploading Images in CodeIgniter
3. Testing the application

Chapter 13: How to Send Email using CodeIgniter

1. CodeIgniter Email Configuration

2. CodeIgniter Email View
3. CodeIgniter Email Controller
4. Email Routes

Chapter 14: Laravel vs CodeIgniter: Which is Better?

1. What is Laravel?
2. What is CodeIgniter?
3. Why use Laravel?
4. Why use CodeIgniter?
5. Features of Laravel
6. Features of CodeIgniter
7. Laravel vs. CodeIgniter: Know the Difference
8. Laravel vs. CodeIgniter which is better?
 Chapter 1: What is CodeIgniter? How
does it Work?
What is CodeIgniter?
CodeIgniter is a PHP MVC framework for developing applications rapidly.
CodeIgniter provides out of the box libraries for connecting to the database
and performing various operations. Like sending emails, uploading files,
managing sessions, etc.

CodeIgniter Features
Let's see some of the features that make CodeIgniter great. The following list
is not exhaustive but gives you an idea of what to expect when working with
CodeIgniter.

Small footprint

The entire source code for CodeIgniter framework is close to 2MB. This
makes it easy to master CodeIgniter and how it works. It also simplifies
deploying and updating it.

Blazing fast

Users tend to favor applications that load very fast. If you have worked with
some of the modern frameworks, then you will realize that they take less
than one second to load just after installation. CodeIgniter,
you can loads on average around less than 50ms. The extra time spent
optimizing like is the case in another framework is freed up when you are
working with CodeIgniter.

Loosely coupled

The built-in features are designed to work independently without relying too
much on other components. This makes it easy to maintain and make
upgrades

MVC Architecture

The framework uses the Model-View-Controller architectural design. It is

industry standard practices when working with web applications. MVC
separates the data, business logic, and presentation.

Excellent documentation:

The framework is well documented, and there are good books, tutorials and
answered forum questions on CodeIgniter. This means whatever challenge
that you have, chances are someone has already encountered the problem,
solved it and the solution is out there for you.

Application specific built-in components:

CodeIgniter has components for sending email, database management,

session management and many more as you will discover as we continue
with the tutorials.

Extendable:

CodeIgniter comes with some libraries, and helpers out of the box. If
what you want is not there or you would like to implement an existing
feature your way. Then you can do so easily by creating your libraries,
helpers, packages, etc.

Short learning curve:

CodeIgniter is easy to master for anyone who is already familiar with PHP.
Within a very short time, the student can start developing professional
applications using CodeIgniter.

How CodeIgniter Works?

CodeIgniter is an MVC framework. MVC stands for Model View Controller.
When a user requests a resource, the controller responds first. The controller
understands the user request then request the necessary data if necessary.

For example, if you want to retrieve a customer with the id= 3, the
controller will receive your request, then request the model to retrieve the
record with the id of 3. The model returns the record to the controller. The
controller then forwards the result to the view which formats it into a
human-readable format. Then the results are returned to the user in the
browser.

The following image shows how CodeIgniter works:

CodeIgniter Release History
2006 First version of CodeIgniter
2009 ExpressionEngine 2.0 launched
British Columbia Institute of Technology took
2014
ownership of the project
2019 Stable version 4 expected to launch

Summary
CodeIgniter is a PHP framework for developing applications rapidly
The entire source code for CodeIgniter is close to 2MB. This makes it
easy to master CodeIgniter and how it works
The built-in features of CodeIgniter are designed to work independently
without relying too much on other components
The framework uses the Model-View-Controller architectural design
The framework is well documented, and they are good books, tutorials
and answered forum questions on CodeIgniter CodeIgniter comes with
some libraries, and helpers users out of the box
CodeIgniter is easy to master for anyone who is already familiar with
PHP
In CodeIgniter user requests a resource, the controller responds first.
The controller understands the user request then request the necessary
data if it is important
 Chapter 2: How to Download & Install
CodeIgniter + Composer [Configuration
Included]
In this tutorial, we are going to look at how you can install and configure
CodeIgniter. They are two ways of installation CodeIgniter. You can
download the latest version from the CodeIgniter website, or you can use a
tool like a composer to automate the installation

Download and Install Latest CodeIgniter

Framework
The source code for the CodeIgniter framework is available on the official
CodeIgniter website. If you want to download the latest version of the
framework, then you should do it from the official web page.

Step 1) Open the following URL in your browser https://codeigniter.com/

The image below shows the download link to the latest version of the
framework

Step 2) Clicking the above link will download the framework as a zipped
folder. Unzip the contents of CodeIgniter-3.1.10.zip
Step 3) Let's say you want to create a project called the online store. You
can follow the following steps to start your project. Create a new
directory in on your development drive, e.g, D:\Sites\online-store

Step 4) Open the contents of CodeIgniter-3.1.10, you should be able to

see the following files

Copy the above contents to your project directory, e.g.,

D:\Sites\online-store

Step 5) Just to make sure everything is ok, open the terminal and start the
built-in PHP server

cd D:\Sites\ online-store
Run the following command

php -S localhost:3000

load the following URL into your browser

http://localhost:3000/

If you see above image, all is working well,

What is Composer?
The composer is a package management system for PHP. A package is simply
a collection of PHP scripts that work together towards a single
goal. Based on this definition, CodeIgniter can even though it's a
framework, qualifies to be labeled a package in composer terminologies.

The following image shows how the composer works

The author of CodeIgniter hosts the package at Packagist which is a central

repository for PHP packages, etc.

When the developer runs the composer command to download CodeIgniter,

Composer communicates with Packagist and downloads the latest release of
the package. In addition to installing frameworks such as CodeIgniter,
Composer can also be used to;

Install individual packages such as third-party email or database

Library
 Update existing packages
Remove installed packages

How to install Composer

Step 1) Load the following URL in your browser
https://getcomposer.org/download/

Download the setup and follow the installation instructions.

Step 2) Open the command prompt/terminal Run the

following command
composer

You will see the following results

If you can see the above results, then congratulations, you have successfully
installed the composer.

Let's now create a new project called online-store Run

the following command

composer create-project CodeIgniter/framework online-store

HERE,

composer create-project CodeIgniter/framework online-store

composer invokes the composer program, create-project downloads
the specified project framework which is in the namespace
CodeIgniter.

You should be able to see results that is similar to the following

If you are a big fan of commands on the terminal then this is the way to go
otherwise you can use the good old fashioned download the zipped file,
unzip and happy coding.

CodeIgniter Config Files

Now that we have successfully installed CodeIgniter let's look at the
configuration directory

The configuration directory is located in

application/config
HERE,

autoload.php – specifies the helpers, libraries, drivers, packages, etc that

should be loaded when the application starts
config.php – contains application configurations such as base url,
language, query strings, etc.
constants.php – as the name suggets, this file I used to define
application constants
database.php – contains database connection parameters
doctypes.php – defines document types i.e. html4, html5, sv10 etc
foreign_chars.php – defines foreign characters that are to say
characters that are found in languages such as Russian and others
hooks.php – allows you to define your own hooks memcached.php – if
you are using CodeIgniter together with Memcached then you can use
this file for configurations. migration.php – if you want to use database
migrations in CodeIgniter then you can use this file to config the
settings. mimes.php – contains file mime types
 profile.php – contains settings that ae used by the built-in CodeIgniter
compiler
routes.php – contains the application routes
smileys.php – contains settings for smileys
user_agents.php – contains settings for browser user agents, i.e.,
Chrome, Opera, Firefox, etc.

CodeIgniter Configurations
let's now make some of the most common settings in CodeIgniter

Open application/config/config.php

Base URL

$config['base_url'] = '';

Sets the base URL. If its blank then CodeIgniter will set it for you
automatically. If you want to be explicit about your base URL, then you can
use the something like the following

$config['base_url'] = 'http://localhost:3000';

HERE,

$config['base_url'] = 'http://localhost:3000'; sets the base URL to

localhost running on port 3000.

Class Prefix

CodeIgniter uses the prefix CI_Classname. As a best practice and to avoid

collisions with internal classes, you can prefix your class, i.e., MY_Classname.
The following line is used to set your class prefix
$config['subclass_prefix'] = 'MY_';

Query Strings

These are parameters that are visited in the URL, i.e.,

example.com/index.php?q=eggs. If you would like to use such URLs, then you
will have to set

$config['enable_query_strings'] = FALSE;
To
$config['enable_query_strings'] = TRUE;

Other settings

They are many settings that you can set in config.php including date
formats, cache and view paths, etc. much of what you configure depends
on your application needs

How to remove index.php in CodeIgniter

CodeIgniter is an MVC framework. This means it has a single entry point into
the application which is index.php. It doesn't matter what URL you access.
The all go through index.php. by default, index.php is shown in the URL as
shown in the example below

example.com/index.php?q=eggs

The URL looks longer and weird. The good thing is you can configure
CodeIgniter to remove that.

Open application/config/config.php
Locate the following line

$config['index_page'] = 'index.php';
Set it to the following
$config['index_page'] = '';

HERE,

We are using mod_rewrite to remove the page so as per requirement,

this should be set to blank.

Next, we need to create the .htaccess that rewrites the URLs Add a

new file .htacces in the root directory of the application Add the

following code
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond $1 !^(index\.php|resources|robots\.txt)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L,QSA]

HERE,

The above code is for configuring web servers that run apache server.
The above code basically gets the URI parameters and executes them
via index.php even if it's not showing in the browser URL.
Summary
They are two ways of installation CodeIgniter. You can download the
latest version from the CodeIgniter website, or you can use composer to
automate the installation
The composer is a package management system for PHP
A composer can be used for: Install individual packages, Update existing
packages remove installed packages