Controllers

Controllers are the heart of your application, as they determine how HTTP requests should be handled.

What is a Controller?
Let’s try it: Hello World!
Methods
Passing URI Segments to your methods
Defining a Default Controller
Remapping Method Calls
Private methods
Organizing Your Controllers into Sub-directories
Included Properties
- Helpers
Validating data
That’s it!

What is a Controller?

A Controller is simply a class file that is named in a way that it can be associated with a URI.

Consider this URI:

example.com/index.php/helloworld/

In the above example, CodeIgniter would attempt to find a controller named Helloworld.php and load it.

When a controller’s name matches the first segment of a URI, it will be loaded.

Let’s create a simple controller so you can see it in action. Using your text editor, create a file called Helloworld.php, and put the following code in it. You will notice that the Helloworld Controller is extending the BaseController. you can also extend the CodeIgniter\Controller if you do not need the functionality of the BaseController.

The BaseController provides a convenient place for loading components and performing functions that are needed by all your controllers. You can extend this class in any new controller.

For security reasons be sure to declare any new utility methods as protected or private.:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class Helloworld extends BaseController
{
    public function index()
    {
        echo 'Hello World!';
    }
}

Then save the file to your /app/Controllers/ directory.

Important

The file must be called ‘Helloworld.php’, with a capital ‘H’.

Now visit your site using a URL similar to this:

example.com/index.php/helloworld

If you did it right you should see:

Hello World!

Important

Controller class names MUST start with an uppercase letter and ONLY the first character can be uppercase.

This is valid:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class Helloworld extends BaseController
{

}

This is not valid:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class helloworld extends BaseController
{

}

This is not valid:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class HelloWorld extends BaseController
{

}

Also, always make sure your controller extends the parent controller class so that it can inherit all its methods.

Note

The system will attempt to match the URI against Controllers by matching each segment against folders/files in APPPATH/Controllers, when a match wasn’t found against defined routes. That’s why your folders/files MUST start with a capital letter and the rest MUST be lowercase. If you want another naming convention you need to manually define it using the URI Routing feature.

Here is an example based on PSR-4: Autoloader:

\<NamespaceName>(\<SubNamespaceNames>)*\<ClassName>

$routes->get('helloworld', 'App\Controllers\HelloWorld::index');

Methods 

In the above example, the method name is index(). The “index” method is always loaded by default if the second segment of the URI is empty. Another way to show your “Hello World” message would be this:

example.com/index.php/helloworld/index/

The second segment of the URI determines which method in the controller gets called.

Let’s try it. Add a new method to your controller:

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class Helloworld extends BaseController
{
    public function index()
    {
        echo 'Hello World!';
    }

    public function comment()
    {
        echo 'I am not flat!';
    }
}

Now load the following URL to see the comment method:

example.com/index.php/helloworld/comment/

You should see your new message.

Passing URI Segments to your methods 

If your URI contains more than two segments they will be passed to your method as parameters.

For example, let’s say you have a URI like this:

example.com/index.php/products/shoes/sandals/123

Your method will be passed URI segments 3 and 4 (“sandals” and “123”):

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

class Products extends BaseController
{
    public function shoes($sandals, $id)
    {
        echo $sandals;
        echo $id;
    }
}

Important

If you are using the URI Routing feature, the segments passed to your method will be the re-routed ones.

Defining a Default Controller 

CodeIgniter can be told to load a default controller when a URI is not present, as will be the case when only your site root URL is requested. Let’s try it with the Helloworld controller.

To specify a default controller open your app/Config/Routes.php file and set this variable:

$routes->setDefaultController('Helloworld');

Where ‘Helloworld’ is the name of the controller class you want to be used.

A few lines further down Routes.php in the “Route Definitions” section comment out the line:

$routes->get('/', 'Home::index');

If you now browse to your site without specifying any URI segments you’ll see the “Hello World” message.

Note

The line $routes->get('/', 'Home::index'); is an optimization that you will want to use in a “real-world” app. But for demonstration purposes we don’t want to use that feature. $routes->get() is explained in URI Routing

For more information, please refer to the “Routes Configuration Options” section of the URI Routing documentation.

Remapping Method Calls 

As noted above, the second segment of the URI typically determines which method in the controller gets called. CodeIgniter permits you to override this behavior through the use of the _remap() method:

public function _remap()
{
    // Some code here...
}

Important

If your controller contains a method named _remap(), it will always get called regardless of what your URI contains. It overrides the normal behavior in which the URI determines which method is called, allowing you to define your own method routing rules.

The overridden method call (typically the second segment of the URI) will be passed as a parameter to the _remap() method:

public function _remap($method)
{
    if ($method === 'some_method') {
        return $this->$method();
    } else {
        return $this->default_method();
    }
}

Any extra segments after the method name are passed into _remap(). These parameters can be passed to the method to emulate CodeIgniter’s default behavior.

Example:

public function _remap($method, ...$params)
{
    $method = 'process_'.$method;

    if (method_exists($this, $method)) {
        return $this->$method(...$params);
    }

    throw \CodeIgniter\Exceptions\PageNotFoundException::forPageNotFound();
}

Private methods 

In some cases, you may want certain methods hidden from public access. To achieve this, simply declare the method as private or protected. That will prevent it from being served by a URL request. For example, if you were to define a method like this for the Helloworld controller:

protected function utility()
{
    // some code
}

then trying to access it using the following URL will not work:

example.com/index.php/helloworld/utility/

Organizing Your Controllers into Sub-directories 

If you are building a large application you might want to hierarchically organize or structure your controllers into sub-directories. CodeIgniter permits you to do this.

Simply create sub-directories under the main app/Controllers/ one and place your controller classes within them.

Important

Folder names MUST start with an uppercase letter and ONLY the first character can be uppercase.

Note

When using this feature the first segment of your URI must specify the folder. For example, let’s say you have a controller located here:

app/Controllers/Products/Shoes.php

To call the above controller your URI will look something like this:

example.com/index.php/products/shoes/show/123

Each of your sub-directories may contain a default controller which will be called if the URL contains only the sub-directory. Simply put a controller in there that matches the name of your ‘default_controller’ as specified in your app/Config/Routes.php file.

CodeIgniter also permits you to remap your URIs using its URI Routing feature.

Included Properties 

Every controller you create should extend CodeIgniter\Controller class. This class provides several features that are available to all of your controllers.

Request Object

The application’s main Request Instance is always available as a class property, $this->request.

Response Object

The application’s main Response Instance is always available as a class property, $this->response.

Logger Object

An instance of the Logger class is available as a class property, $this->logger.

forceHTTPS

A convenience method for forcing a method to be accessed via HTTPS is available within all controllers:

if (! $this->request->isSecure()) {
    $this->forceHTTPS();
}

By default, and in modern browsers that support the HTTP Strict Transport Security header, this call should force the browser to convert non-HTTPS calls to HTTPS calls for one year. You can modify this by passing the duration (in seconds) as the first parameter:

if (! $this->request->isSecure()) {
    $this->forceHTTPS(31536000); // one year
}

Note

A number of time-based constants are always available for you to use, including YEAR, MONTH, and more.

Helpers 

You can define an array of helper files as a class property. Whenever the controller is loaded these helper files will be automatically loaded into memory so that you can use their methods anywhere inside the controller:

namespace App\Controllers;

class MyController extends BaseController
{
    protected $helpers = ['url', 'form'];
}

Validating data 

To simplify data checking, the controller also provides the convenience method validate(). The method accepts an array of rules in the first parameter, and in the optional second parameter, an array of custom error messages to display if the items are not valid. Internally, this uses the controller’s $this->request instance to get the data to be validated. The Validation Library docs have details on rule and message array formats, as well as available rules.:

public function updateUser(int $userID)
{
    if (! $this->validate([
        'email' => "required|is_unique[users.email,id,{$userID}]",
        'name'  => 'required|alpha_numeric_spaces'
    ])) {
        return view('users/update', [
            'errors' => $this->validator->getErrors()
        ]);
    }

    // do something here if successful...
}

If you find it simpler to keep the rules in the configuration file, you can replace the $rules array with the name of the group as defined in Config\Validation.php:

public function updateUser(int $userID)
{
    if (! $this->validate('userRules')) {
        return view('users/update', [
            'errors' => $this->validator->getErrors()
        ]);
    }

    // do something here if successful...
}

Note

Validation can also be handled automatically in the model, but sometimes it’s easier to do it in the controller. Where is up to you.

That’s it!

That, in a nutshell, is all there is to know about controllers.