After numerous requests, today we are launching a new screencast series on Nettuts+ that will focus exclusively on the CodeIgniter PHP framework. Over the course of about 10 videos, I'll teach you exactly how to use this framework. Ultimately, we'll work our way up to building a custom CMS. Without further ado, here's day one!
Day 1
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Kevin Urrutia July 14th
Great tutorial
( )Jeffrey Way July 14th
Really Kevin? After five seconds of being posted?
( )Evan Riley July 14th
He’s scrubbed the video really fast, and learned EVERYTHING ;o
Great tutorial Jeff.
Brenelz July 14th
People just love posting first in hopes that people will visit their website…
Annoying!
Keith July 14th
Heh heh
Jarod Taylor July 15th
I think Envato should implement a reverse hierarchy on their commenting system, putting the most recent comment first. This would probably eliminate the arbitrary “first!” comments.
DemoGeek July 16th
It’s really annoying to see people trying to game the commenting system to their advantage. Actually it might backfire if you leave those silly comments. You might get a click but people might not want to visit your site by remembering and typing in the URL.
Commenting system brings in additional perspectives, thoughts and even points out any flaws with the article. But because of exploitation, to get those useful comments we have to skim thru so much of static one-liners and that’s terribly annoying.
Jeff – I’m sure you have comment moderation…I’m wondering why you are approving these one-liners!
Eneza July 14th
AHIHIHHI! EVAN RILEY Nice Observation!
( )Kevin Quillen July 15th
It’s just spam to me when posters have nothing to offer more than ‘great tut’. Did you take anything away from it? Have any ideas from CodeIgniter because of it?
( )Omar abid July 17th
Yes comments are made for critic and to correct something/discuss it in the post, not to say “great tut”.
A good solution is to create a user page, links will be made to that page, it’ll reduce spam.
Ben September 3rd
I disagree. While comments are definitely a great way to have a discussion and learn from (I certainly have learned many things from them), they are also a way to simply let the author know you appreciate their work.
Great tut by the way
I’ve been trying to decide which framework to learn and this is really exciting for me!
Thanks Jeffrey!
tuntis July 14th
I wish the video framerate would be higher – it’s quite choppy right now.
( )Jeffrey Way July 14th
Might be better to let it buffer a bit. You can also download a high quality version from iTunes. Just search for “Nettuts”.
( )Jesse July 14th
Jeff, how long before it shows up in iTunes? I’m not seeing it there yet.
Jerichvc July 14th
Thanks Jeff, I didnt know its available in there.
Omar abid July 17th
the video player is completely “SH*T”, can’t you change it with JW FLV?
Jeffrey Way July 14th
Hmm..Should be soon. All of the files are there. Just waiting for iTunes to update.
( )Kyle July 14th
Nice job!
( )KevinBrown July 14th
This is great!
Tutorials like these keep my hope alive for good content.
( )Alex Wind July 14th
:-O You finally got a mac!!!!
( )Jeffrey Way July 14th
I’ve had a Mac for a very long time.
( )Nouman Saleem July 14th
Lucky one ;]
ebflute July 17th
Which model Mac do you have and are you running any VMWARE?
Joakim July 14th
Wow, just watched it. Really cool. I think you just made me understand the ground principles of MVC. I don’t know why, but I think it helps so much when I learn things from screencasts rather than reading about it. I will follow this serie the upcoming weeks/months.
Really interested to see how the admin panel is managed with the MVC and CI. Can’t wait untill the next screencast.
( )Jon July 14th
It’s a long one! I’ll get to it later tonight. Perfect timing though for the Code Igniter Tuts, thanks!!
( )Khalid Sharif July 14th
How i can download it from iTunes?
i searched in the iTunes store i didnt find anything =S
( )Yoosuf July 14th
use ITUNES
( )mment July 14th
Great tutorial Jeff!
Couldn’t you write short PHP in CI?? I mean instead of ???? Or do I mix something?
Can’t wait for the next one!
( )mment July 14th
Oh!
I mean instead of
( )mment July 14th
Can’t write PHP in comments! So you could delete my comments
Jeffrey Way July 14th
Sure – you can use short tags if you like.
( )Piero July 14th
Great, i love CI
( )Dave Poon July 14th
I love it! I have used Codeigniter for a while, but just love to see how people use it and teach it!
( )Johan July 14th
I really like that you do this series. But I wish that when showing the basics of CI you show talk about constructors. Also I don’t think the way you retrieve records in the model is very handy. I would return like this in the model:
$this->db->select(’*');
$this->db->from(’tablename’);
return $this->db->get()->result_array();
And in the controller:
$data = array(
‘records’ => $this->site_model->get_all()
);
$this->load->view(’home’, $data);
And in the view:
And check out the userguide. There are some coding-guidelines which will help your code look good (as you probably end up with libraries, helpers and stuff contributed by other communitymembers).
Great initiative though! The CI-framework is really cool and very well fit together. It really makes development smooth and easy extendable.
Take care!
( )Johan
Jeffrey Way July 14th
Johan – We’ll go over all of that in coming weeks.
( )Johan July 14th
Okidoki!
Gerardo Jaramillo July 14th
I love codeigniter… much easier than symphony and CakePhp.!!!
( )barat July 14th
Why CI … no PHP5 and no Full OOP … Kohana is fresher version of CI … but from other hand the logic from CI can be used in Kohana then maybe this viedo series will be usefull after all
( )Jeffrey Way July 14th
CI supports PHP5.
( )Johan July 14th
As Jeffrey said, CI supports PHP5. Kohana has some great features but the community is not like CI’s, ie very friendly and active.
Also, full OOP has it’s advantages but tends to raise the learningcurve. I think CI is great for most projects… Afterall, it comes down to your personal taste…
( )Felix Boyeaux July 14th
Sure, CI supports PHP 5 since PHP is backward compatible, but the fact that CI also supports PHP 4 tends to make the framework slightly less powerful than if it was using strict PHP 5.
I’m thinking of the lack autoloading features, visibility protection for instance. Those exists in Kohana but not in CI.
kevtrout July 14th
Felix, autoloading is supported in CI.
Matt July 15th
@kevtrout, no not in the conventional sense it doesn’t
What Codeigniter does is let you specify certain files which should be loaded on every page view, whereas a good PHP5 framework will use php’s autoloading capabilities to load the class when you initiate an instance of it.
See: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.autoload.php
Myke July 14th
Great Tut!
( )Michael Tysk-Andersen July 14th
Hi Jeffrey.
Really enjoy your screencasts, but when you toggle between two applications then please use command-tab instead of exposé. Its highly confusing to watch exposé in a screencast!
( )sina July 16th
+1
( )Felix Boyeaux July 14th
Haven’t watched it yet but i’ll be sure to do so as soon as possible! I’ll definitely be following this.
I must admit I prefer Kohana however… IMHO Kohana is somewhat of a CI, but better. Why? Well simply because Kohana is strict PHP5 OOP, and thus Helpers, Models, and Views are autoloaded, the global namespace is kept clean because helpers are a standalone class, and much, much more.
Still great to talk about CI since it’s probably one of the best frameworks out there.
( )Mark Jones July 14th
I’m currently trying to choose a PHP Framework to learn and these tutorials on net tuts are making me want to use CI, I’m just concerned about learning something that it seems like people are going to be moving away from in favour of, as people are pointing out, Frameworks that make no compromises and just drop PHP4 for Strict PHP5 OOP. However at the same time, I think these tutorials may be a good introduction to MVC & developing with a framework and no doubt a lot of the knowledge can be applied when working with Kohana specifically considering it is a branch of CI.
Just don’t want to limit my options.
( )Felix Boyeaux July 14th
As you say, Kohana is kind of a fork of CI – even though the code has been totally rewritten and improved – and you should therefore have no problem whatsoever migrating from CI to Kohana later on if you feel the need to do so
( )Gbolahan July 14th
JW can u be my MASTER and i’m ur student like dey do in d movies..learnt alot from u..(waiting 4 ur reply)
( )Ernest Mountain July 14th
Any chances of doing the same but with CakePHP?? I wanted to learn a PHP frameweork but I didn’t know which one was better, so i my “research” I found that John Snook said that CakePHP is way better.
Thanks in advance
( )Jeffrey Way July 14th
Actually – as I remember it, Snook noted that both frameworks are really good. However, he tends to prefer CakePHP a bit more. Others feel differently.
( )Christian July 15th
Who the heck is John Snook?
Collin July 15th
Someone important in the industry – http://snook.ca/
Sumesh July 15th
(in reply to Christian) You must be kidding me, or living under a rock, haven’t you come across a reference of Snook? Here’s his homepage anyway (snook.ca), in one line I’d call him excellent and thinking-on-his-feet coder, good designer (rare among programmers), and CSS expert.
( )Daniel July 14th
What a cool series! Great Tutorial Jeff. Keep on the great work! I tried to find some german tutorials – no way. Got to make my own by the moment i can program in ci
( )This one is really easy to understand. All thumbs up!
Jimi Wikman July 14th
A very nice tutorial!
( )I’ll look forward to follow this in the weeks to come
Christer July 14th
Finally a screencast series aboot CI. Been waiting for this some time now. Now it would be perfect if Expression Engine 2.0 would be released when this series is completed.
( )sven July 14th
nice one, enjoyed it very much.
jeff, get something like quicksilver and give your dock a break
( )Jeff Way July 14th
I use quicksilver. The dock just looks cluttered because I had to record at a low resolution.
( )Randy July 14th
Well, I have read the CI manuals a tiny bit confused, and once again, you come to the rescue to explain it so well as you did with the Wordpress+ series!
Nice work! Feel free to post the rest of the series tomorrow(JK!)
( )Wade July 14th
Thanks Jeff, been waiting for someone to do something on Code Igniter I have wanted to try it out for a while now.
A quick question (i think) though, towards the end of the screencast you loaded all the data into $data['records'] (via the controller) but then in the view you called the data back by referencing $records how does that work? sorry very new to OOP.
( )Ian July 14th
The way CI works when you pass the data array to to a view it automatically converts all the array keys to variables.
( )Wade July 23rd
Awesome thanks, i watched the tutorial over and went onto the codeigniter site and did some reading… thanks for the help though.
Gene July 14th
thanks for this great screencast.. will probably watch this by weekend.. cheers!
( )Chris Brown July 14th
Awesome! I’ve been wanting to get my hands around CodeIgniter for a while and this will definitely will be helpful.
I assume a lot of these tutorials can be ported to Kohana since it was built based on the CodeIgniter framework, correct?
( )Prabhjeet July 14th
Now that’s gonna to be interested series. I love it. Keep it up. Thanks.
( )Steve July 14th
Good stuff. I’ve worked in some J2EE frameworks and the hardest part is always figuring out how all the parts are wired together. CodeIgniter looks like a big improvement over the embedded PHP 3 stuff I wrote back in the day. But the object model and MVC pattern do add complexity and indirection. So far, so good.
( )Yoosuf July 14th
you can t compare PHO with JAVA, JAVA is a Mess
( )Rata July 14th
The tuts in general are great, but I would prefer an iTunes version, if posible for direct download.
With my bandwidth here in Spain it’s a pain to se this video in a decent resolution.
Kind regards
( )Rata
Jeffrey Way July 14th
There is an iTunes version.
Just search for Nettuts.
( )viaria July 14th
what is ganna look like or work like in the end of this course,
( )that is what i wondering,
james July 14th
thanks guys! a more robust PHP/MySQL from scratch would be helpful too. Been through the Lynda stuff, but some better real world applications would be awesome.
( )Brian Temecula July 14th
I sure wish I could have seen this tutorial back when I was trying to wrap my brain around MVC. This is an excellent tutorial, not just for CI, but for MVC in general.
My site is currently powered by CI. I don’t see any reason to change. CI offers everything I need in a framework, and for those who think CI needs to drop php4 support, who cares? Benchmark it and see that CI rocks!
( )Felix Boyeaux July 15th
Benchmarking is not the only thing to judge a framework… Sure CI is fast. Lightning fast. But the fact that it doesn’t take advantage of PHP 5 makes coding more painful since the latest features aren’t supported.
So actually, i DO care that CI doesn’t drop PHP 4 support.
( )Yoosuf July 14th
good idea, recently i found KOHANA is better one than Codeigniter, any way both are similar, keep-it up Jeff
i have some questions, still i didn’t get from the Codeigniter forum to, hope you guys can help me on this
if you guys wanna know a bit about KOHANA visit for http://eyoosuf.blogspot.com/2009/07/kohana-yet-another-php-framework.html
( )Drazen Mokic July 14th
Hey i love CI, nice series.
Can you share you Desktop Wallpaper Jeff? =)
( )Dan Harper July 15th
http://www.flash-junkie.com/wallpapercomp/full/wickedpixel.jpg
( )Anthony July 14th
Great tutorial. This really helped me understand MVC Design, mainly because you took the time to cover the model. The other screencasts I’ve seen are just “Here’s the controller, here’s the view. That’s all you need to know!”
( )Thanks for explaining what the model is and how to use it!
Eneza July 14th
RAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Mr. Jeffrey Way! Nice Comment! WAHAHAHAHA
( )Nathan Ledet July 14th
Nice tutorial.
Really looking forward to seeing some AJAX and jQuery goodies…
Also, Jeff, I see a lot of CodeIgniter apps that use Modules. some use a plugin called Matchbox – Can you go over the concept of “modules” and why they are important and why they should or should not be used? That would be very helpful!
( )Jeffrey Way July 14th
Sure – but that’ll be several videos down the road.
( )dronix July 14th
very nice. I’m looking forward to the series. I don’t know how you’ll be breaking up the tut but it’ll be nice if you get to explain the design and coding process of the cms. This of course would be a separate tutorial in itself.
( )Muhammad Adnan July 14th
good tut jeff ..
( )great site , i visit it daily !
Joel July 14th
Have you used Joomla! ??
If so, do you know how it compares?
I am a heavy user of Joomla! and i love it, but havent used CodeIgniter and dont know the difference?
( )Yoosuf July 15th
that sounds cool, could you make a Tutorial How to make as Joomla Templates
( )Johan July 16th
CodeIgniter = PHP Framework
( )Joomla = Content Management System (CMS)
chris October 25th
This question make my hairs going down of my head… but ok .
Joomla is a CMS, all is already done for end user … you just have to modify it as you like to fit your goal by adding module, component and templates but you cannot developp everything you want with it.
CodeIgniter is a FRAMEWORK , that’s mean with CI you can build a Joomla CMS like (with a lot of time and skills), and create everything you need or imagine.
FRAMEWORK is a tool to developp faster what you have in mind.
( )CMS, all is done, just use it.
saurabh shah July 14th
m working on Code Igniter since a year now .. and its amazing … m loving it
( )All the best for the video series … Hope it will be gr8 … thnx for sharing it …
ebflute July 14th
Jeffrey, this is a great tutorial! You are explaining the MVC model very well. I noticed on some of the pages you do not use a closing php tag, is there a reason for that?
( )Sideshow Bob July 15th
Yes! Codeigniter user guide has a style guide which recommends that you don’t close the php tag.
( )http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/styleguide.html#php_closing_tag
Dan Harper July 15th
The PHP closing tag is optional on PHP-only pages, and it’s actively encouraged in CodeIgniter not to use it can lead to errors when extra white-space follows the closing tags.
See the CodeIgniter ‘Style Guide’ for more details: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/styleguide.html#php_closing_tag
( )Kyle July 15th
Yes, see this page from the user guide: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/styleguide.html#php_closing_tag
( )Ian July 14th
One suggestion I’d make for the file structure is moving the application and system folder from the document root. That way when you put your site onto a production server there is no way people can get to those directories.
( )Guario Rodriguez July 14th
Great Tutorial! I’m excited to learn about PHP and Code Igniter. I have a couple of questions.
1. I saw you have both Coda and TextMate, which one would you recommend if you had to choose one? I’ve tried Aptana Studio and it is fine but I think I want a more light weight IDE.
2. What is the syntax coloring scheme you are using in TextMate, I like it.
( )Nathan Ledet July 15th
I use Coda and TextMate. Both have perks that I like
( )pab July 14th
Nice one Jeff, I love CodeIgniter
( )tom July 14th
free it ebooks
php, css, jQuery, JavaScript, c#, c++ and more
http://www.itebooksforfree. blogspot.com
( )Raspo July 14th
I really like these “from scratch tutorial”…
( )..i’m waitin for the next episode!
Mohamed Aslam July 15th
Waiting for such tutorial way way back.
Thank you Jeff for the grate tutorial
( )Sideshow Bob July 15th
Hi Jeff,
Nice tut but agree with previous poster that all the screen switching can be distracting, cmd+tab would be better.
Will you be using the template parser class in future tuts? It make view files really clean and much easier for designers to work with.
( )Phil July 15th
CodeIgniter is a great framework – but kinda wish we’d got more in depth in the Diving into PHP stuff first
( )Evan Riley July 15th
There’s a whole series on Diving into PHP, just looking the video section a bit more..
( )choen July 15th
Thanks…Great Tut.
( )woony July 15th
Great, I was waiting for something like this!
( )Any way to download it NOT from iTunes?
Mohammad Koubeissi July 15th
Amazing again. I always look forward to your screencasts Jeffrey, even if I’m not remotely interested in the topic, I’ll always end up learning something.
( )Jack Franklin July 15th
Best screencast yet JW, really liked it!
My next enquiry which I guess you will cover is how to give variables to the method so you can have a more dynamic query.
Thanks again.
( )masa July 15th
Good Tutorial but Yii is much batter than CodeIgniter
( )Sk1ppeR July 15th
Man 2-3 days ago i started to explore the possibilities of MVC design pattern. The first thing that i realize is that i should use a framework and i also realize that CodeIgniter is the best. I downloaded it and seriously i had no idea how the things work
and then by the luck your tutorial came up. I think i’m ready to start developing using MVC. Thank you Jeff
( )Marko Randjelovic July 15th
Thanks, Jeff!
( )Matt July 15th
Great tutorial; I am looking forward to the rest of this series. Unfortunately I don’t do too well with delayed gratification…
( )Matt Price July 15th
Another nice screencast Jeff, Looking forward to the rest of the series! I also put forward another vote for more “Diving into PHP” that’s been gone longer than “Wordpress for Designers” series.. At least Drew had a pretty good excuse
where’s your bust up ribs? 
Also, Glad i found nettuts on iTunes.. nice…
( )Javed Gardezi July 15th
Well i hope this will be a good series.. for the beginners of CodeIgniter
( )James July 15th
I decided I wanted to start learning about CI last week and I’ve got it installed and started reading through the user guide but this helped a lot! I’m looking forward to the rest of the tutorials.
Thanks!
( )Michael Wales July 15th
I’ve noticed a lot of comments from people saying they love this tutorial because they had no idea what to do with CodeIgniter from the start. This is a good screencast, but I encourage all of you to check out the CodeIgniter Forums. The community we’ve built there is amazing, friendly and helpful – I guarantee you will get the help you need within a few hours of posting your question.
Finally, there are a few comments proclaiming Kohana is better than CodeIgniter. Without getting into the discussion of how ignorant a comment like this is (really, how can one framework be better than another, it’s just a toolset), I will say there are advantages/disadvantages to both. Selecting Kohana just because it is strict PHP5 but failing to use any of Kohana’s real features is a dumb move. Likewise, selecting CodeIgniter just because it was the original, is a dumb move.
Every framework (CodeIgniter, Kohana, CakePHP, Ruby on Rails, etc) should be considered for each of your projects. Compare your requirements against the features and capabilities of that particular project, then make an informed decision.
( )Chris Simpson July 23rd
smartest comment so far. +1million.
( )Michael July 15th
So do I need to subscribe to Nets+ to view all these tutorials?
( )Evan Riley July 15th
No, the video is in the post, just watch it or download it from iTunes, but it’s recommended to buy the Nettuts+ Subscription!
( )Michael July 15th
Cool. Yep, some very tempting ones. And great value.
What screencasts would you suggest I download?
I’m a PHP-er looking to speed up my process. I’d thought the Job Board #CI one.
Will be back
Mike July 15th
How about alternative version of video for mobile users? Will watch when on computer.
( )Ben July 15th
Fantastic…
Many thanks
( )James July 15th
Request: DIVING INTO PHP?????? What happend to it?
( )Nathan Ledet July 15th
it’s on blog.themeforest.net
http://blog.themeforest.net/screencasts/diving-into-php-video-series/
( )Skofus July 15th
Three Words, ILU Jeffrey Way <3
( )barry July 15th
Thanks for the tutorial. Not only did I learn about CodIgniter, but I FINALLY figured out how to use MAMP. Yeah, I’m a n00b, but we all were once.
Thanks so much. You really made a difference.
( )HaPm July 15th
CodeIgniter, jQuery ~> I love it, thankz
( )Seth July 15th
Nice tutorial. I was just looking for something exactly like this so your timing is perfect…now you just need to release one every day until I’m caught up to speed!
The main thing I would love to cover is how to handle session variables, user information and privacy stuff.
( )Jeffrey Way July 15th
Hey Seth – One per day is officially an impossibility.
I’m shooting for every Tuesday.
( )Scott Radcliff July 15th
I have been using CI for awhile, and in my humble opinion, it is the best Framework available. Zend is a close second though. Not sure how involved you plan on getting, but a screencast on building a plugin would be great. I didn’t read all the comments, so my apologies is that was already suggested.
( )Jeffrey Way July 15th
Hey Scott – I’d like to do a plugin video as well. It all will depend on how popular this series gets. I’m hoping it does well.
( )David Ferguson July 15th
I have loved some of your tuts in the past, but you really need to rehearse/prepare before you do the next one, it was kinda clumsy
Other than that, great tutorial. A lot of people come to the CI forums every day trying to grasp the basics. The dev’s have some really good video tuts on the site, but some users still need just a little more coaching to get things straight.
Good job, looking forward to the rest of the series.
( )Jeffrey Way July 15th
Ohh – clumsiness accounted for about 80 seconds of the 30 minute tutorial.
Recording this stuff is hard!
( )Nathan Ledet July 15th
No doubt about that.
What I got out of the tutorial outweighed the “oopsies” by far.
Jake July 15th
Wow, what a great series! I can’t wait to get into this. I always wanted to learn CI but never had the guts to jump into it myself. Thanks Jeff!
( )IRV July 15th
Thanks for the screencast, very usefull. I learned about MVC and all the other patterns at college, but all of them applied in java, and I don’t like jsp, so now I’m using my vacations to learn CI and this screencast is what I needed to start
( )samiul jahan July 15th
Can u plz show how to use jqgrid with codeigniter?
( )james July 15th
i watched this last night. really great. at one point, i had a question and you said something like “now you’re probably wondering why…..”. nail on the head. looking forward to the rest
( )blazedd July 15th
Awesome! I have been wanting to look into a Framework like CI recently. This helps a ton! Thanks!
( )eques July 15th
well, i just started a few days ago with kohana,because its totally OO and PHP5, but now with this series, i’m going to CI, just because the tutorial is a great start, thanks!
( )wayno007 July 15th
Oh man, I am so in for this series — thanks, Jeff!
( )Imamu Hunter July 15th
Man this is an excellent tutorial. I can’t wait for the next ones. The only thing I hate is that I have to wait for a whole week.
( )arnold July 15th
now here you go….JW did it again..
( )nice tuts..going to watch this after work…
Dean July 15th
Can’t wait! Ive been wanting to lean CodeIgniter for a few months now. But didn’t know where to start. But Nettuts came to the rescue, once again!!
Thanks!!
( )jzigbe July 15th
Something wrong with the feed?
( )It says, “Error Invalid Feed”
Please Check
jzigbe July 15th
Sorry, it is working now!
( )dede July 15th
thanks for this screencast, but you should find a better player, since i’m completely unable to preview it due to lack of buffering and my slow internet connection.
maybe a download link?
( )Mark Jones July 15th
I think I’m just going to take the plunge and follow this tutorial and the other CI tutorials on net tuts and use CI as my first framework. Feel pretty confident that once I’ve got my head around one framework, migrating to a new one shouldn’t be too painful.
Would be interested to know why you specifically chose CI though Jeffrey? I haven’t seen a comment from you explaining this unless I missed it / you explain in the screencast? Obviously you don’t owe anyone an explanation but it would definitely be an interesting insight.
( )Jeffrey Way July 15th
Hey Mark – No specific reason. I mostly chose it because the community is unparalleled — not to mention the amazing user’s guide.
( )Mark Jones July 15th
Nice and simple but also what I thought. I sat down and read through a lot of the user guide and came away feeling pretty confident about what I’d gone over, it really is extremely well documented. I haven’t experienced the community yet but I’m sure it won’t be long until I do. Cheers for the response.
Jeffrey Way July 15th
No problem. The bottom line is that all of them have their strengths and weaknesses. So to some extent, it’s like debating whether Coke or Pepsi is better… It just depends on preference.
webn July 15th
Thank you Jeffrey Way. You are doing really excellent job for web developers. net tut+ has become an obvious place for us.
( )Alex Stomp July 15th
Sweet tut Jeff! I think I’ll keep reading these instead of reading the plus tut for Custom CMS creation.. I’ll learn much more this way.
( )Can’t wait to try all this out.
Alex Stomp July 15th
I just noticed… You’re missing a ‘+’ at the end of Tuts in the first paragraph of the first section of the cgtuts footer..
( )Andrew July 15th
This is going to be a great series; I’m really looking forward to the rest of it.
BTW, that MVC stuff is going to be hard to wrap my head around; can you recommend a good book on the topic?
( )Chris July 15th
I like these code igniter tutorials. More?
Chris
( )Chris July 15th
Can you put the tutorials on itunes aswell now?
So i can watch them offline?
Chris
( )Mini0n July 15th
Hi there!
Nice tutorial! I’m starting to work on CodeIgniter and this comes right on time! =)
Is there any way of uploading this video to some file sharing site, or maybe upload it on Youtube?
Thanks!
( )Jeffrey Way July 16th
It’s on iTunes. Just search for Nettuts+.
( )Donna July 15th
I love codeigniter! Really great framework. I look forward to the rest of this series.
If you want to learn more, read the Professional Codeigniter book by Thomas Myer from Wrox. I read it from cover to cover and it is superb! He explains things so clearly and goes through the process of building an application throughout the book like you would in the real world along with real world issues.
( )Tutorial City July 15th
I’ve read a couple books on codeigniter, and I’m really excited to watchthe videos and discuss about this awesome framework!
( )Mats July 16th
This is amazing! I really enjoy hove you summarize something right after you finished explaining, it helps a lot for us PHP noobies.
I love these “dive deep into something” tutorials. Can’t wait for the next one!
( )DemoGeek July 16th
Since there are more CI materials out there I would rather prefer to see some Kohana screencasts that goes into the detail.
( )Ben July 16th
I think CodeIgniter deserves more attention than Kohana ; and CI hasn’t that many screencasts yet. There was Elliot Haughin’s, but he decided to sell them on his new website, so there’s barely no screencasts for CI anymore… It’s true Kohana hasn’t much too, but it’s still young.
( )DemoGeek July 16th
Ben – by “CI materials” I meant the wonderful documentation and a whole lot of readables out there for CI. Of course, Jeff’s screencasts are one of the easiest and simplest way to learn something new. And so I want him to consider the people who are moving more on the OOP way to Kohana and guide them as well.
Rob July 16th
Nice intro to CI Jeff, looking forward to the rest of it, question though, can MySQL stored procedures be used in place of how this screencast has described calls to the db?, ie. $this->db->get(’SELECT * FROM table’); ? I use MS-SQL SP’s no problem with PHP, but can’t seem to crack MySQL yet.
This would be very handy especially when the processing more advanced sql statements is required.
( )eques July 18th
hi, i’m now to CI but i think you mean, “can i input my own sql” ?
yes you can with the query() function:
$query = $this->db->query(”YOUR QUERY”);
ie: $query = $this->db->query(’SELECT * FROM my_table’);
more info to be found in the manual
hope this helps
( )Rob July 20th
No, I actually mean to use MySQL Stored Procedures instead of hard coded SQL within the class.
For example, if you have a stored procedure: SP_SEL_ALL_FROM_TABLE_WITH_VAR
…and call it from the class eg, $query = $this->db->query(”SP_SEL_ALL_FROM_TABLE_WITH_VAR”)
Just from what I gather, while MySQL supports stored procedures, it doesn’t do a very good job of it. I’d like to see an example of how to use SP’s in MySQL when dealing with a more detailed SQL statement.
Dejan July 16th
Nice to have CI tuts, but have to make it possible for visitors with a slow connection to be able to preview it.
( )Even better, i would prefer written tuts over screencasts.
Jeffrey Way July 16th
You can download them on iTunes.
( )Ben July 16th
I’m so happy you are making a 10 video series about CI! It’s the framework I chosen months ago, without any regret. I learned it so fast! I felt in love with it at the first place because it is not camel cased, very well documented, and it has a very welcoming community! Thanks to Nettuts, this framework gets more popularity, I’m glad. Thank you
( )Mexx July 16th
great tutorial Jeff! I always learn coding with your screencasts!
( )Tim July 16th
Great tutorial Jeff! Also pretty awesome I can get them all off of iTunes (I didn’t know that before) Thanks.
( )paul July 16th
thanks alot.
( )Brock July 16th
Really amazing job – looking forward to the next session.
( )ricochet July 16th
Thanks Jeffery, I just finished ‘PHP Solutions – David Powers’ on your recommendation…a much easier read than Welling/Thomson. I have also been researching the frameworks… & CI looks like a good place to start!
( )pablarribas July 17th
All those complaining about the one who posted first: ENVIOUS!
LOL
( )amnesia7 July 17th
Great screencast.
I’m hoping as part of the series you’ll mention ways that the CMS can be written securely using the CI framework.
It would also be good to see uni-form used for the admin area as well although not a big deal if not.
( )Michael July 17th
Totally agree.
Sure Jeff will cover basic security.
I’m not sure how much in-depth he’ll go into ‘brute force protection’, ’sql injections’ or ’session hijacking’. Hopefully a little.
( )Nelsaidi July 17th
Awesome awesome awesome, Love you!
( )Michael July 17th
Speechless.
Every tut so far from Jeff has been insanely good.
Just perfect timing with #CI.
Easily the best video tuts I’ve come across. Seems a friendly guy, thorough, interested, great detail. Perfect
Keep these coming sir!
Many thanks
( )Free-Burma July 17th
I really want to learn CI. Thanks alot.
( )aryan July 17th
WAITING FOR THE NEXT.
( )Ronny July 18th
Thanks! I’ve been looking for a tutorial like this! I want all of the videos now!!
( )Warry July 18th
Hi !
I’m currently learning Ci & Kohana, and this tut’ will be very helpfull ! Many thanks ! It’s very hard to find this kind of complete project tutorials !
I hope that the publications will coincide with my training !
( )Mirko July 18th
Very good start, waitind for next lesson!
( )Elyézer Mendes Rezende July 18th
I’m following you in twitter, and saw your preference for codeigniter.
I have a question: why have you choosen this framework instead others?
Is there any technical concept?
( )pachito86 July 18th
Really clear!! Keep going!
( )Chris July 19th
Jeffrey,
I have been wanting to learn a PHP framework. I kinda already have a pretty good idea about the basics of programming and php in general and I can look up the gaps in things but I wanted to dive into learning a frame work so I could build dynamic sites and learn more about MVC and why this has become the best way to program at this time.
( )Chris July 19th
^ Now that’s just really bad grammar but I am so excited. I love it when I learn something and I understand exactly what its doing.
( )V July 19th
Hey Jeff,
nice tutorial… but what’s that dark theme you were using in textmate? would really like to use it too…
Thanks
( )Turki July 19th
When does Day2 release ?
( )Turki July 21st
please answer me
( )Gav July 19th
Can’t wait to see the others in the series!
Touch wood the next full release of CodeIgniter will drop PHP4 support
( )jako July 19th
Hi there!,
( )I have been trying to see the video but always starts and then stops and keep loading over and over again,
Any clue?
Thanks
Free-Burma July 19th
Dear all,
Where can I watch PHP 5 iwth OOP Video Tutorials ?
many thanks in advance,
koko
( )amnesia7 July 20th
This site may help:
http://killerphp.com/videos/
( )Aqib Mushtaq July 20th
great video, can’t wait for the next one!
( )Ricardo "mAiN_iNfEcTiOn" Machado July 20th
Hi m8s… I totally agree with you… Those “Great Tut” comments are just… desperate(?) and even more, they come from “attention-seekers”
Anyway… I’ve been using Code Igniter for a while and their user guide is just awesome. Their framework (from expression-engine
) is very complete. (Can and is always extended a little more with the community).
I only have one question to make… Why not Kohana (kohanaphp.com) ? It’s full OOP and based on Code Igniter… And it seems to be mantained by it’s own community i guess… Give it a shot
( )jako July 20th
Hi there,
Im not able to reproduce the video (is loading over and over again). May I download it?, I have a Plus account but I cant get the download link
Thanks
( )dronix July 20th
you can download it from the iTunes store, search for Nettuts+ under Podcasts
( )jako July 20th
Thanks. Im trying to access from my Ubuntu. Not much success so far :-S
jako July 20th
Finally I download it from: http://blip.tv/file/2358233?filename=NETTUTS-CodeIgniterFromScratch698.flv
Kenshin July 21st
Very nice tutorial!!!
I am really interested into Day2…
( )Henry Barroso July 21st
Why blogs ?
It’s so boring that this new frameworks always use the same example of blogs.
It’s seem a good tutorial, but, why not create something different.
( )Adrian Sinclair July 22nd
ya, i’ve never seen a tutorial on how to make a forum
( )Kris Allen U. July 21st
Nice! can’t wait for the next ones.
( )Chris Brown July 21st
Please, sir, can we have another. I’m chomping at the bit!
( )Jimmi July 22nd
Hey, nice series. Now i can finally learn it
Btw, day 2 is out on Itunes.
( )jeanv July 23rd
hi, thanks a lot ! What about the DB ? is the .sql file included in the source ?
( )Dave Redfern July 23rd
Hello, is the next codigniter screencast being made available to the world or premium members only? when is the next coming out either way?
thanks
( )dave.
Carl July 23rd
The day 2 tutorial is available on iTunes. Just click iTunes store and search for nettuts.
( )Ben R. July 24th
Thanks for the tutorial.
I’ve been using codeigniter for a little while now, but I’m not always sure that I do things correctly, so I’m really looking forward to watching the whole series.
I was just wondering, in this series will you be making a function for every page on the site, or will you cover how to do things a little more dynamically(having one function for each type of page and then feeding data into them to output different pages?)
( )Phil July 24th
From a quick scan of the comments, I don’t think anyone’s mentioned that when loading a model you don’t need to assign it to a variable, it will automatically be available through it’s class name, eg.
$this->load->model(’my_model’);
echo $this->my_model->method();
you can give the model loaded a different variable using:
$this->load->model(’my_model’, ‘my_name’);
With the second param being your new object name
if that’s been mentioned, sorry for repeating
jeff, loveyour tuts, you do them in a way anyone can understand
( )Nathan Ledet July 24th
What the dealio????
The second screencast is on iTunes – but not here… meh… It was out on Tuesday, like Jeff said – he was aiming for Tuesdays, but it hasn’t appeared here.
oh wells
( )Roj July 24th
Awesome tutorial. Thank you!
( )Aqib Mushtaq July 25th
What? iTunes, what about people like me who are running linux? Got to pull out the windows pc now.
As long as I can watch it, its all good
( )SNaRe July 25th
I already downloaded Day 2 from itunes . I advise you too
( )Jason July 25th
If you’re running a fresh install of WAMP and CI like myself and are already running into problems such as deprecation errors and then a URI issue here’s some help: In index.php in your CI folder replace line 12 “error_reporting(E_ALL);” (without quotes) with this:
“error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED);” (without quotes)
then, you’ll probably get an error about a bad URI. Here’s the solution for that as well. In URI.php which is located in \system\libraries replaced line 189 “if ( ! preg_match(”|^[".preg_quote($this->config->item('permitted_uri_chars'))."]+$|i”, $str))” (without quotes) to read like this: “if ( ! preg_match(”|^[".str_replace('\\-', '-', preg_quote($this->config->item('permitted_uri_chars')))."]+$|i”, $str))” again without the quotes. This should help you save a couple of hours of frustration.
( )barat July 27th
IMO You shouldn’t change anything in framework “core” if You realy don’t have to
( )For error reporting it’s better to change it in php.ini in Your WAMP
And I think, that the sollution for this URI problem can be solved in some kind of “easy” way like changing something in CI config or htaccess or again something in WAMP config files … but i’m not sure about that, because I’m using Kohana – ask in CI forums if they have had problems with WAMP’n'URI
Jason August 4th
the other option is to downgrade from php5 to php4.x
I haven’t seen any other option other then my first suggestion.
FunkyMonkey September 9th
*argh* … I tried your fix, but unfortuntely it dosn’t work for me *sigh*
( )paul July 27th
cool ! I just downloaded CodeIgniter yesterday, what a coincidence.
( )hope it can help me build my ecommerce project
Rainman July 29th
Hi All,
Why I can not see the screencast? I tried firefox, chrome and IE, all failed.
( )Did anyone experience that?
Gonzalo July 31st
It’s working fine on my end. It takes a while to buffer but that’s probably my crappy connection.
( )alan August 1st
I watched it for 13 min. it’s that zoom thing that’s drive me crazy!
( )I hope you will be more organized on next one
alan August 1st
Forget to Thank You for screencast!
( )Sorry,there is no edit on comments.
mark August 4th
Excellent Tutorial, there really needs to be more real-world examples on using code igniter, as its such a usefull framework.
Thanks and keep them coming
( )Darren August 5th
Very nice walk-through but I hit a snag part way through and would like to know what I might have done wrong. After you started having us edit the files in the config folder every time I try to open the site I get a database error.
“Unable to connect to your database server using the provided settings”
Not too sure what I might have done wrong. I’m using WAMP and a pretty recent release of PHP.
( )Darren August 5th
Never mind I figured out the issue. Aside from a few typos I thought I had setup a root password for myphpadmin when I had not.
( )Sadia August 11th
I’m new to frame works. Some things confuse me:-
what is the advantage of using frame work?
( )which frame work is better and why?
frame work has different coding logic than original php language? should we quit learning php?
isn’t it additional headache to learn framework?
Anton Agestam August 25th
Frameworks does not have another logic than PHP since their built on PHP. I think what you mean is that they often use object oriented programing (OOP). I think it’s essential to code PHP the procedural way before you go on to OOP since it requires a deeper understanding of logic structure.
For you it might be overkill to use a framework, but for larger projects where more people are involved or where you think you will edit things like the design and the mark-up frequently it might be a good alternative!
( )evan August 12th
Thanks a bunch, I loved the tutorial.
My only criticism is I think you should take your time to explain just a little more in depth. But none the less, I love the screen cast, keep it up.
( )codedude August 14th
I’m having problems. Whenever I put the codeigniter in the www folder in wamp (running windows vista…) its gives me two errors. Here they are.
A PHP Error was encountered
Severity: 8192
Message: Function set_magic_quotes_runtime() is deprecated
Filename: codeigniter/CodeIgniter.php
Line Number: 60
A PHP Error was encountered
Severity: 8192
Message: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated
Filename: libraries/Loader.php
Line Number: 255
I’ve done everything exactly like you said in the screencast. Any thoughts?
( )Anton Agestam August 25th
Kind of sounds like you’ve got an odd version of PHP installed?
( )FunkyMonkey September 9th
I get the exact same errors… WAMP
Apache Version : 2.2.11
PHP Version : 5.3.0
MySQL Version : 5.1.36
Getting a bit frustrated here!
( )RN August 19th
Awesome Tutorial. The walk-through covered all the logical ways to begin using CI. Just a tip for you though, be a little more prepared before you create a highly publicized screencast like this! You went back and forth a lot between windows and backspacing like you were going to break the key. Rehearsal maybe? Other than that the screencast was awesome. I’m moving on to the next now. Cheers!
( )Darren August 21st
It’s weird, for some reason I can only access my $row variables like this:
apposed to the OOP fashioned:
title; ?>
( )Anton Agestam August 25th
Great tutorial! I’ve been trying to get into MVC for a while and I’ve kind of understood it but when it got to I didn’t really know how to do it. (It might have to do with the fact that I’ve tried to build my own framework.) However after watching your video I feel I’ll be able to put this into practice.
I’ll watch the other videos in the series soon. Thanks Jeff!
( )Rahul August 26th
Awesome Tutorial.. Thanx a lot…
( )Alvin Crespo August 28th
Just got some time to start this series.
First of all, thank you very much for your time and dedication to teaching to this community.
I understand the basics of MVC much better now, and can see how a framework like CI can help in creating powerful yet simple applications using PHP.
However a few things that I believe would be best when continuing this series would be to follow standards that are used in the industry; such as naming conventions and best uses of PHP so instead of mixing php and html with the “:” symbols so that the code is clean and reusable. I understand for simple videos why you may use this, but its always best to begin with user based standards.
But we all know that this always depends on each persons opinions on what the correct standards are.
I can’t wait to continue this series and see how I can use it in my projects.
( )techsta August 29th
Thanks lots,
Was wondering about using a framework and this has helped put it into persepective a lot easier.
( )ahmed August 29th
Thank you .. Great Tutorial
( )Chaky August 30th
thanks !
( )galih September 1st
Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in C:\xampp\htdocs\ci\system\codeigniter\Common.php on line 130
Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in C:\xampp\htdocs\ci\system\codeigniter\Common.php on line 136
what is that mean
( )Jeroen van Heel October 5th
Use Xampp 1.7.1 not the newest version 1.7.2
( )Jeroen van Heel October 5th
When you have error with xampp the most commen problem is you have the new version running use the older version -> Xampp 1.7.1
( )angel September 15th
I love the tuts! 1 comment… I wish the video player worked a little better, its almost impossible for me to scrub to rewatch stuff…
Anyhow thanks for the patience in teaching us!
( )Howard September 17th
Thanks for the great tutorial.
In the 13th and 14th minute in the video, you add the “About” page and update the controller add the About function. You then say something like, if you don’t know the advantages of coding it this way, you soon will.
What is the advantage of having one controller that points to different pages rather than having separate controllers for each page?
Thanks!
( )Axertion September 18th
I’m tired of not being able to write my own logical PHP ect. I think I’m going to watch this series start to finish and try to master the principles of CodeIgniter. Do you think it would be possible to learn from this without any advanced PHP knowledge? I watched this video and understood pretty much everything. I just want to know if its advisable to learn CodeIgniter before actually knowing PHP in general?
Thanks!
( )Tariq Mahmood September 19th
Its great tutorial for beginners
( )Keiran September 20th
Hey!,
Very Nice tutorial I was very skeptical at first about using frameworks However you have shown me the light!
( )André Martins October 1st
Great Tutorial, Jeffrey.
It would be really good to have it in a podcast format. As I’m a little busy when I’m at my desktop computer. It easier to me to find time for this things on the move.
Best Regards!!
( )Twan October 2nd
I really don’t know what to do and am getting frustrated. I copied the “ui” folder to my htdocs root and tried to access “http://localhost/ci” in the browser and I am receiving this:
“A Database Error Occurred
Error Number: 1146
Table ‘ci_series.test’ doesn’t exist
SELECT * FROM (`test`)”
I don’t know what is wrong or how to fix it as I want to follow along with this tutorial so bad. Can anyone help me please???
( )Jeffrey Way October 2nd
Make sure that you create a database called “ci_series” and then a table called “test.” Have you done this yet?
( )Vincent C October 2nd
Nice tutorial, however I am stumbeling upon a database error.
A Database Error Occurred
Unable to connect to your database server using the provided settings.
I get this at the part where $autoload['libraries'] = array(”);
is changed into $autoload['libraries'] = array(’database’);
I don’t use a username/password on my localhost, I use xammp.
Have I missed something? I tried multiple times but I cant get past this part.
Thanks in advance!
( )Joe October 2nd
Really impressive tutorial! Thanks for introducing me to CodeIgniter, and jQuery a couple months ago.
( )ken October 3rd
CAN’T play this flash…..how to do?
( )Matt October 3rd
This is a great tutorial! Not many folks take the time to go through it step by step. Thanks so much.
( )Davide October 7th
Jeff…THANKS SO MUCH!!
( )DonCoryon October 12th
Great tutorial. I found it from the CI website and it was worth the time. I look forward to going through your other tutorials as well. Thanks.
( )Feruzi October 12th
I have tried to follow the do as the tut on day 1. But I see you have index.php but the files I unzipped have index.html. What goes into in the index.php? And does it stay in the applications or out of the application folder.
What did I miss?
( )Mike October 14th
I had a weird thing happen – when I tried to use the variable name anotherValue in the data array, the view loaded without any of the data. As soon as I changed the name from anotherValue (in my case to ‘myValue2′ – it worked. ???
( )David October 22nd
I just want to thank you for the tutorial, it was well structured and easy to follow, I’ve been studying PHP for about a month on my own and I liked this framework (CodeIgniter) The way you explained it was very simple and allow some room for my imagination on how can I use it.
( )Steve Williams October 25th
Great Tutorial! Just started out with CI today and this has shown me the basic concepts – will be watching the full series. I agree with some of the comments above about the switching of window to window and having loads of other unrelated windows open, it made it a little difficult to follow at certain points.
Also, the video player made it a nightmare to scrub back and forth.
Question: I was intrigued by the Textmate shortcut you used to build the HTML skeleton, something like beginht.. is this custom or standard?
Cheers,
( )Steve
Julian Caldwell November 2nd
Anyone having trouble getting the ScreenCasts to work?
( )Musa November 3rd
I don’t like codeigniter as i found, it doesn’t has ORM, No Admin routing, no sense for Model etc etc. Anyway – i was developing a site using CI, it works fine on local(MAMP), but when uploaded to server – it says
“A Database Error Occurred
Unable to connect to your database server using the provided settings.”
Someone told me to add
$db[‘default’][‘port’] = “3306”;
but still same error, any idea?
( )Merrick Christensen November 5th
Love this tutorial. Seriously. But consider buying a pop blocker for your mic. Just helps the explosions that make this a little difficult to listen to. Thanks doing this series!
( )sbisking November 6th
Great tutorial, very informative, just might give CI another chance. Learned quite a bit. Looking forward to more CI tutorials. Thank you.
( )cisdevry November 8th
Excellent tutorial. Very helpful. It was clear and you delivered the message. I can’t wait to check out the other video days.
( )Thanks for sharing this with us
Cisdevry