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    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development
    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development
    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development
    Ebook757 pages3 hours

    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development

    By Adam Griffiths

    2/5

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    About this ebook

    In Detail

    CodeIgniter is an open source PHP framework with a small footprint and exceptional performance. It gives you a rich set of libraries for common tasks, with a simple interface to access them. There are several unexplored aspects of CodeIgniter that can help developers build applications more easily and quickly. In this book, you will learn the intricacies of the framework and explore some of its hidden gems.

    If you want to get the most out of CodeIgniter, this book is for you. It teaches you what you need to know to use CodeIgniter on a daily basis. You will create mini-applications that teach a specific technique and let you build on top of the base.

    This book will take you through developing applications with CodeIgniter. You will learn how to make your CodeIgniter application more secure than a default installation, how to build large-scale applications and web services, how to release code to the community, and much more. You will be able to authenticate users, validate forms, and also build libraries to complete different tasks and functions.

    The book starts off introducing the framework and how to install it on your web server or a local machine. You are introduced to the Model-View-Controller design pattern and how it will affect your development. Some important parts of the CodeIgniter Style Guide are included to keep CodeIgniter development as standardized as possible; this helps greatly when working as part of a team or taking on an old CodeIgniter project. You will quickly move on to how CodeIgniter URLs work and learn about CodeIgniter-specific files such as helpers and plugins. By the time you finish this book, you will be able to create a CodeIgniter application of any size with confidence, ease, and speed.

    This guide will enable you to become well-versed with CodeIgniter through practical applications using the tools and techniques used by many seasoned CodeIgniter developers.

    Approach

    This book is a practical guide that takes you through a number of techniques. Each chapter builds upon knowledge from the previous chapter. Step-by-step instructions with examples and illustrative screenshots ensure that you gain a firm grasp of the topic being explained.

    Who this book is for

    This book is written for advanced PHP developers with a good working knowledge of Object Oriented Programming techniques who are comfortable with developing applications and wish to use CodeIgniter to make their development easier, quicker, and more fun. Basic knowledge of CodeIgniter will be helpful. This book will suit developers who fall into three categories:

    • Professional Developers - employees of a software house or organization with in-house software development
    • Freelance Developers - solo developers working in the industry on their own
    • Just-for-fun Developers - people working with PHP building web applications is their spare time for fun
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPackt Publishing
    Release dateApr 26, 2010
    ISBN9781849510912
    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development
    Author

    Adam Griffiths

    Adam Griffiths is a student and freelance CodeIgniter Developer based in the United Kingdom. He has five years web development experience, the last two being largely influenced by CodeIgniter. He has worked on many websites, both large and small, from small blogs to large multi-national companies. He is well versed in development techniques and how to squeeze that little bit more from an application. He has also made a number of contributions to the CodeIgniter Community, most notably The Authentication Library, a very simple-to-use but full-featured Authentication Library for CodeIgniter. When CodeIgniter and PHP aren't spiralling around his head, Adam enjoys practising card and mentalist tricks, mainly sleight of hand and card handling. He has performed at local and formal functions for hundreds of people. He is also a guitar player and enjoys playing acoustically at pubs and small gigs. Moving back towards computing, he has a deep interest in Cryptography. He loves finding patterns in data and loves using pen and paper to decipher any cipher text he may find around the web.

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    Reviews for CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development

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    • 2/5
      Much of this book's material can be found just as easily and for free in the documentation that comes with CodeIgniter. Some of the material in the second half of the book was useful to me, though it was offset to a large extent by some iffy material, including what to me appeared to be some rather poor implementation of OOP concepts. This book may be useful to intermediate PHP developers who are brand new to CodeIgniter, but I cannot recommend it to anyone with more experience with both.

    Book preview

    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development - Adam Griffiths

    (missing alt)

    Table of Contents

    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development

    Credits

    About the Author

    About the Reviewers

    Preface

    What this book covers

    Who this book is for

    Conventions

    Reader feedback

    Customer support

    Errata

    Piracy

    Questions

    1. Getting Started with CodeIgniter

    Upgrading from older versions of CodeIgniter

    Downloading and installing CodeIgniter

    Getting the CodeIgniter files

    Introducing Model View Controller (MVC)

    Controllers: The business logic

    Defining a default Controller

    Remapping function calls

    Models: Data abstraction layer

    Loading a Model

    Connecting to your database automatically

    Views: Your template files

    Loading a view

    Loading multiple views

    Adding dynamic data

    Creating loops

    Returning views as data

    Autoloading resources

    Formatting your code—PHP Style Guide

    PHP closing tag

    Incorrect

    Correct

    Class and method naming

    Incorrect

    Correct

    Incorrect

    Correct

    Variable names

    Incorrect

    Correct

    Commenting

    Poor

    Good

    Use of TRUE, FALSE, and NULL

    Incorrect

    Correct

    Short opening tags

    Incorrect

    Correct

    One statement per line

    Incorrect

    Correct

    CodeIgniter URLs

    Removing the index.php file

    Adding a URL Suffix

    CodeIgniter specific files

    Helpers

    Loading a helper

    Loading multiple helpers

    Using a helper

    Extending Helpers

    Plugins

    Loading a plugin

    Loading multiple plugins

    Using a plugin

    Libraries

    Creating your own libraries

    Using CodeIgniter resources within your library

    Using your class

    Extending core libraries

    Loading your extended library

    Replacing core libraries

    Summary

    2. Learning the Libraries

    What is a library?

    What do libraries do?

    Benchmarking Class

    Setting a benchmark

    Setting multiple benchmarks

    Profiling your benchmarks

    Making use of the Profiler Class

    Display total execution time

    Display memory consumption

    Input and Security Class

    XSS filtering

    Filtering a single item

    Automatic filtering

    Filtering images

    Retrieving POST data

    Retrieving GET data

    Retrieving GET and POST data

    Retrieving COOKIE data

    Retrieving SERVER data

    IP Addresses

    Retrieving a user agent

    Email Class

    Send an e-mail

    Build a contact form

    Our contact form

    Checking if the form has been submitted

    Checking the values of the form

    Validate the e-mail

    Using the XSS filter

    Send the e-mail

    Using the Email Class

    Using the Email Helper

    Batch e-mail processing

    File Uploading Class

    Create the Upload Views

    Create the Upload Controller

    Our initial controller

    Specify the allowed file types and maximum file size

    Uploading the file

    Image Manipulation Library

    Initializing the library

    Creating a thumbnail

    Cropping an image

    Rotating an image

    Clearing values in loops

    Pagination Class

    Example

    Customizing the pagination

    Customize the First link

    Customize the Last link

    Customize the Next link

    Customize the Previous link

    Customize the Current Page link

    Customize the Digit link

    Session Class

    Initializing the Session Class

    Autoload the Session Class

    Manually load the Session Class

    How do CodeIgniter sessions work?

    What is stored in a session?

    Adding session data

    Retrieving session data

    Removing session data

    Removing a single session item

    Removing multiple session items

    Destroying a session

    Flash data

    Add flashdata

    Read flashdata

    Keep flashdata

    Using a session database

    Unit testing a class

    Initializing the class

    Running tests

    Generating reports

    Strict mode

    Enabling or disabling unit testing

    Create a template

    Summary

    3. Form Validation and Database Interaction

    Why should I validate my forms?

    Using the Form Validation Library

    The form validation process

    The user's process

    The development process

    Contact form

    Loading the assets

    Setting the rules

    List of validation rules

    Prepping data

    The rules

    Check the validation process

    Sending the email

    Final controller code

    Changes to the form view

    Re-populating field values

    Showing individual errors

    Final form view

    Changing the error delimiters

    Changing delimiters globally

    Changing delimiters individually

    Saving sets of validation rules to a config file

    Creating sets of rules

    Calling a specific set of rules

    Associating a rule group with a controller

    Using callbacks

    Include the callback in the rules

    Creating the callback

    Create the function

    Load the database library

    Performing the database query

    Adding a condition

    Show a success page

    Database interaction

    Loading the library

    Performing simple queries

    Returning values

    Returning a result object

    Returning a result array

    Returning a row object

    Returning a row array

    Result helper functions

    Number of rows returned

    Number of fields returned

    Free result

    Active Record

    Selecting data

    $this->db->get();

    $this->db->get_where();

    $this->db->select();

    $this->db->from();

    $this->db->join();

    $this->db->where();

    Single key or value method

    Multiple key or value method

    Custom key or value method

    Associative array method

    Custom string

    $this->db->like();

    Single key or value method

    Multiple key or value method

    Associative array method

    $this->db->group_by();

    $this->db->order_by();

    $this->db->limit();

    Inserting data

    $this->db->insert();

    $this->db->set();

    Updating data

    $this->db->update();

    Deleting data

    $this->db->delete();

    $this->db->empty_table();

    $this->db->truncate();

    Active Record caching

    $this->db->start_cache();

    $this->db->stop_cache();

    $this->db->flush_cache();

    Method chaining

    Manipulating databases with Database Forge

    Loading the Forge class

    Creating a database

    Dropping a database

    Adding fields

    Creating a table

    Dropping a table

    Renaming a table

    Modifying a table

    $this->dbforge->add_column();

    $this->dbforge->drop_column();

    $this->dbforge->modify_column();

    Summary

    4. User Authentication 1

    Defining our goals

    Our goals

    Creating and connecting to the database

    Front end code

    Index function

    Details view

    Dashboard function

    Dashboard view

    Login function

    Form validation

    Password check

    Running the validation

    Full login code

    Login view

    Success view

    Register function

    Form validation

    User exists check

    Email exists check

    Running the validation

    Full register code

    Full controller code

    Register view

    Error view

    Logout function

    Logout view

    Model code

    Model constructor

    Create function

    Login function

    Logged in check function

    Full model code

    Addressing some issues

    The Authentication Library

    Summary

    5. User Authentication 2

    Using Twitter oAuth

    How oAuth works

    Registering a Twitter application

    Downloading the oAuth library

    Library base class

    Controller base class

    Library constructor

    Requesting user tokens

    HTTP function

    Parse function

    Controller index function

    get_authorize_URL function

    Main view file

    Change your callback URL

    Creating the access function

    The view file

    Getting access tokens

    get_access_tokens()

    parse_access()

    Logging out

    Debug function

    Final library code

    Final controller code

    Using Facebook Connect

    Registering a Facebook application

    Download the Client library

    Our CodeIgniter Wrapper

    Base class

    Class constructor

    _session();

    Final library code

    The Controller

    The View file

    Summary

    6. Application Security

    CodeIgniter's defenses

    URI security

    Why does CodeIgniter use URIs?

    Why does CodeIgniter restrict URI characters?

    Global data

    Best practices

    Filtering data

    Validation

    Escaping data

    Strong password policies

    Example Form Validation Library rules

    Storing passwords securely

    Storing hashes

    Hashing a password using sha1

    The sha1() function

    The $this->encrypt->sha1() function

    Load the library

    Hash the password

    Static salting

    Simple salts

    Complex salts

    Split at second character

    Split the password in the middle

    Dynamic salting

    Simple dynamic salts

    Complex dynamic salts

    Encrypting passwords

    Setting an encryption key

    Message length

    Loading the class

    Encoding passwords

    Decoding passwords

    Set mcrypt cipher

    Database security

    Escape queries

    The $this->db->escape() function

    The $this->db->escape_str() function

    The $this->db->escape_like_str() function

    Query bindings

    Limiting account access

    Cross-site scripting (XSS)

    Changing the default file structure

    Staying up-to-date

    Summary

    7. Building a Large-Scale Application

    Running benchmarks

    Why run benchmarks?

    Where should I use benchmarks?

    Types of bottlenecks

    Database

    Identifying a database bottleneck

    Rectifying a database bottleneck

    Code

    Identifying a code bottleneck

    Rectifying a code bottleneck

    API

    Identifying an API bottleneck

    Rectifying an API bottleneck

    Bandwidth

    Identifying a bandwidth bottleneck

    Rectifying a database bottleneck

    Static

    Identifying a static bottleneck

    Rectifying a static bottleneck

    Caching

    How does it work?

    How long should I cache pages for?

    Using caching

    Optimize SQL queries

    Query caching

    To cache or not to cache?

    How query caching works

    Managing cache files

    Using query caching

    Deleting cache files

    Deleting all cache files

    Limit results

    LIMIT clause

    Only select what you need

    Avoid disk activity

    Memcache example

    Memcache CodeIgniter library

    Constructor

    Data functions

    Maintenance functions

    Full library code

    Using the library

    Run multiple application instances

    Advantages

    Disadvantages

    Summary

    8. Web Services

    What is a web service?

    Types of web service

    Remote procedure call

    Representational State Transfer

    RESTful web service

    Defining the resource

    How it will work

    Creating our files

    Setting up the database

    REST library

    Base class

    Performing a GET request

    Performing a PUT request

    Performing a POST request

    Performing a DELETE request

    Response function

    The format XML function

    The format JSON function

    Final library code

    Rest Controller

    Base class

    The _remap() function

    Server Controller

    Base class

    The post_get() function

    The post_put() function

    The post_delete() function

    The post_post() function

    Final server controller code

    Post Model

    Base class

    The get_post() function

    The update_post() function

    The create_post() function

    The delete_post() function

    Final post model code

    Create a new post

    Update a post

    Delete a post

    Get a blog post

    Summary

    9. Extending CodeIgniter

    Hooks

    Hook points

    pre_system

    pre_controller

    post_controller_constructor

    post_controller

    display_override

    cache_override

    scaffolding_override

    post_system

    Our hook

    Enable hooks

    Define a hook

    Our hook

    Extended controllers

    Admin controller

    Extended libraries

    The library

    Base class

    userdata()

    set_userdata()

    unset_userdata()

    Full library code

    Custom libraries

    The features

    The library

    The controller

    Helpers

    CodeIgniter's hidden gems

    doctype()

    Array helper

    element()

    random_element()

    Inflector helper

    singular()

    plural()

    camelize()

    underscore()

    humanize()

    highlight_code()

    directory_map()

    Summary

    10. Developing and Releasing Code to the Community

    Find a need in the community (or fill your own need)

    Search for existing solutions

    Use the solutions

    Reinvent the wheel

    List the problems of these solutions

    Create a plan

    List the features

    Prioritize the features

    Writing the library

    Review your code

    Comments

    Fix the problems

    Write a user guide

    Explain the function

    Show the user how to use the function

    Let the user know of any shortcomings

    Use the style sheet given in the CodeIgniter User Guide

    Release options

    Forum post

    Post on your website

    GitHub

    Handling database tables

    Include a .sql file

    Include an install file

    Supporting the code

    Update regularly

    Listen to the users

    Accept contributions

    Communicate regularly

    Don't give a release date

    Keep testing

    Archive old versions

    Use the wiki

    Summary

    Index

    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development

    Adam Griffith

    CodeIgniter 1.7 Professional Development

    Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

    Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

    Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

    First published: April 2010

    Production Reference: 1190410

    Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

    32 Lincoln Road

    Olton

    Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

    ISBN 978-1-849510-90-5

    www.packtpub.com

    Cover Image by Filippo (<filosarti@tiscali.it>)

    Credits

    Author

    Adam Griffiths

    Reviewers

    Jose Argudo

    Saidur Rahman

    Acquisition Editor

    Dilip Venkatesh

    Development Editor

    Dilip Venkatesh

    Technical Editor

    Aaron Rosario

    Indexer

    Monica Ajmera Mehta

    Editorial Team Leader

    Akshara Aware

    Project Team Leader

    Lata Basantani

    Project Coordinator

    Joel Goveya

    Proofreader

    Dirk Manuel

    Production Coordinator

    Shantanu Zagade

    Cover Work

    Shantanu Zagade

    About the Author

    Adam Griffiths is a student and freelance CodeIgniter Developer based in the United Kingdom. He has five years of web development experience, the last two being largely influenced by CodeIgniter. He has worked on many websites, both large and small, from small blogs to large websites for multi-national corporate companies. He is well versed in development techniques and how to squeeze that little bit more from an application. He has also made a number of contributions to the CodeIgniter Community, most notably The Authentication Library, a very simple to use but full-featured Authentication Library for CodeIgniter.

    When CodeIgniter and PHP aren't spiralling around his head, Adam enjoys practising card and mentalism tricks, mainly sleight of hand and card handling tricks. He has performed at local and formal functions for hundreds of people. He is also a guitar player and enjoys playing acoustically at pubs and small gigs. Moving back towards computing, he has a deep interest in Cryptography. He loves finding patterns in data and loves using pen and paper to decipher any cipher text he may find around the web. Find out more and read his blog at http://www.adamgriffiths.co.uk.

    I would like to thank my parents for encouraging me to better myself. If it weren't for them I may not have written this book. I would also like to thank my friends for letting me bounce ideas off of them and develop these ideas. I've wanted to write a book for a while now, so a big thank you goes to Packt Publishing for giving me this opportunity; and to everybody involved in reviewing, editing, and managing the book as a whole.

    To the readers—Thank you for purchasing this book. It means a great deal to me that you will be reading the content that I spent a lot of time on, and you will hopefully learn a lot from it.

    About the Reviewers

    Jose Argudo is a web developer from Valencia, Spain. After finishing his studies he started working for a web design company. Six years later, he decided to start working as a freelancer.

    Now that some years have passed as a freelancer, he thinks it's the best decision he has ever taken—a decision that let him work with the tools he likes, such as Joomla!, Codeigniter, Cakephp, Jquery, and other well-known open source technologies.

    His desire to learn and share his knowledge has led him to be a regular reviewer of books from Packt, such as Joomla! With Flash, Joomla! 1.5 SEO, Magento Theme Design or Symfony 1.3 web application development.

    Recently he has even published his own book, Codeigniter 1.7, which you can also find at Packt's site. If you work with PHP, take a look at it!

    If you want to know more about him, you can check out his site at www.joseargudo.com

    To my girlfriend and to my brother, I wish them the best.

    Saidur Rahman Bijon is an open source enthusiast from Bangladesh. He graduated in computer science in from BRAC university and has been developing web applications for over four years. In this time, he has developed ecommerce, web 2.0, social networking, and microblogging applications. He shares his knowledge and ideas at http://saidur.wordpress.com.

    He started his career by developing a large scale application for the Bangladesh Navy. Since then, he has worked mainly for Japanese and USA based outsourcing companies, where he has built applications in CodeIgniter. Currently, he is working for a USA based company, Blueliner Bangla (http://www.bluelinerny.com/) as a senior software engineer.

    I'd like to thank Packt for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

    I enjoyed it thoroughly.

    I'm really thankful for my family, friends, and colleagues for their help and support.

    I dedicate this book to my family.

    Preface

    This book takes you beyond the CodeIgniter user guide and into more advanced subjects that you need to know if you plan to use CodeIgniter on a daily basis. The book will teach you how to build libraries in order to complete different tasks and functions. You will create mini-applications each of which teaches a specific technique and builds on top of the CodeIgniter base. By the time that you finish this book you will be able to create a CodeIgniter application of any size with confidence, ease, and speed.

    What this book covers

    Chapter 1, Getting Started with CodeIgniter—This chapter guides you from installing CodeIgniter to learning about its URL structure, the MVC design pattern, helpers, plugins, and extending and replacing libraries.

    Chapter 2, Learning the Libraries—You are taken through a number of the core CodeIgniter libraries, being introduced to each library, what it does and how you go about using it. Some libraries work together, and if this is the case, then this chapter explains how they can be used together.

    Chapter 3, Form Validation and Database Interaction—Form validation is a task that some users find difficult. This chapter focuses on teaching you the correct way to validate your forms, by using the Form Validation library. You will also cover the Database library and Database Forge, a way to easily manage database tables.

    Chapter 4, User Authentication 1—The first User Authentication chapter focuses on building your own authentication system. We build a model that handles the registration and logging in of users. We also include a function to check whether a user is logged in or not.

    Chapter 5, User Authentication 2—The second and final User Authentication chapter focuses solely on user log-in in through Twitter oAuth and Facebook Connect. For each example the CodeIgniter code is explained, as well as how both company's APIs work, and to some extent how each differs from the other.

    Chapter 6, Application Security—This chapter discusses how CodeIgniter is secure by design, for example, disallowing certain characters in the URI strings. We also go over what you can do to make your CodeIgniter application more secure than a default installation.

    Chapter 7, Building a Large-Scale Application—This chapter takes you through some of the techniques that you can use to make your CodeIgniter application scalable. You learn about identifying bottlenecks via benchmarking results, caching, using better PHP functions, optimizing SQL queries, and using memcache and multiple application instances.

    Chapter 8, Web Services—This chapter builds an example web service by using the REST principle. This includes a simple client library that issues requests, and a server library that deals with requests and responds as appropriate.

    Chapter 9, Extending CodeIgniter—This chapter covers everything you need to know about extending CodeIgniter's default functionality without hacking at the core files. This is very useful, especially when it is time to upgrade to the newest version of CodeIgniter.

    Chapter 10, Developing and Releasing Code to the Community—In this chapter you will learn how to release code to the community, gain exposure for your released code, and how to properly maintain the code and give good support to those using your code.

    Who this book is for

    This book is written for advanced PHP developers with a good working knowledge of Object Oriented Programming techniques who are comfortable with developing applications and wish to use CodeIgniter to make their development easier, quicker and more fun. Basic knowledge of CodeIgniter will be helpful. This book will suit developers who fall into three categories:

    Professional Developers—Employees of a software house or other type of development company

    Freelance Developers—A sole developer working in the industry on their own

    Just for fun Developer—A person using PHP to build web applications is their spare time for fun

    Conventions

    In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

    Code words in text are shown as follows: We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive.

    A block of code is set as follows:

    [default]

    exten => s,1,Dial(Zap/1|30)

    exten => s,2,Voicemail(u100)

    exten => s,102,Voicemail(b100)

    exten => i,1,Voicemail(s0)

    When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

    [default]

    exten => s,1,Dial(Zap/1|30)

    exten => s,2,Voicemail(u100)

    exten => s,102,Voicemail(b100)

     

    exten => i,1,Voicemail(s0)

    Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

    # cp /usr/src/asterisk-addons/configs/cdr_mysql.conf.sample     /etc/asterisk/cdr_mysql.conf

    New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: clicking on the Next button moves you to the next screen.

    Note

    Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

    Tip

    Tips and tricks appear like this.

    Reader feedback

    Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

    To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail

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