Building a Blogger with the Code Igniter PHP Framework - Defining a simple view file (
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In the previous section, I explained how to build a controller class that was provided with the capacity to display all of the blog entries stored in the "blogs" MySQL table. Of course this operation can't be performed correctly if I don't first create the corresponding view file that actually renders this blog-related data.
Thus, taking into account this requisite, below I included the signature of this view, which looks like this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title><?php echo $title;?></title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><?php echo $title;?></h1>
<?php foreach($result->result_array() as $blog):?>
<h2><?php echo $blog['title'];?></h2>
<p><?php echo $blog['text'];?></p>
<p><?php echo anchor('blogger/comments/'.$blog['id'],'View Blog Comments >>');?></p>
<?php endforeach;?>
</body>
</html>
Despite the short signature of the above view file, it actually performs a few useful tasks that are worth examining in detail. As you can see, this file starts displaying all the corresponding blog entries via a "foreach" loop, including their titles and texts, and it finishes its execution by creating dynamically a link that points to a comments section, in this case by using Code Igniter's "url" helper function.
Naturally, this section hasn't been created yet, and it must be implemented within the previous controller class. However, since this topic will be discussed in forthcoming tutorials of this series, you shouldn't be concerned about it for the moment.
Now that you have hopefully grasped how the previous view file works, you should save it to the Code Igniter /system/application/views/folder as "blogs_view.php."
So far, everything looks good, since at this stage I demonstrated how to build a simple blog application, which for the moment is only capable of displaying a group of blog entries stored previously in a MySQL table.
If you're like me, then you may want to test the application in question. To do this, simply type the following URL into your browser's address field:
http://localhost/codeigniter/index.php/blogger/blogs/
If all goes well, you should get the following output on your browser:
This is the title of the first blog
This is the content of the first blog. This is the content of the first blog. This is the content of the first blog. This is the content of the first blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the second blog
This is the content of the second blog. This is the content of the second blog. This is the content of the second blog. This is the content of the second blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the third blog
This is the content of the third blog. This is the content of the third blog. This is the content of the third blog. This is the content of the third blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the fourth blog
This is the content of the fourth blog. This is the content of the fourth blog. This is the title of the fourth blog. This is the title of the fourth blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the fifth blog
This is the content of the fifth blog. This is the content of the fifth blog. This is the title of the fifth blog. This is the title of the fifth blog. This is the title of the fifth blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the sixth blog
This is the content of the sixth blog. This is the content of the sixth blog. This is the content of the sixth blog. This is the title of the sixth blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the seventh blog
This is the content of the seventh blog. This is the content of the seventh blog. This is the content of the seventh blog. This is the title of the seventh blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the eight blog
This is the content of the eight blog. This is the content of the eight blog. This is the content of the eight blog. This is the title of the eight blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the ninth blog
This is the content of the ninth blog. This is the content of the ninth blog. This is the content of the ninth blog. This is the title of the ninth blog.
View Blog Comments >>
This is the title of the tenth blog
This is the content of the tenth blog. This is the content of the tenth blog. This is the content of the tenth blog. This is the title of the tenth blog.
View Blog Comments >>
That was pretty satisfactory, wasn't it? As shown above, this initial version of the blogger works fairly well, since it's capable or displaying all the blog entries stored on the aforementioned "blogs" MySQL table. And naturally, this process has been accomplished by using only a controller and a basic view file.
What else can you ask for? Well, actually there's many more features that need to be added to the blogger, but they'll be incorporated progressively in successive articles of this series. For the moment, study all of the examples coded here, so you can start familiarizing yourself with developing database-driven programs using Code Igniter.
Final thoughts
In this first chapter of the series I explained how to build a basic blog application with the Code Igniter PHP framework. As you saw before, this process was pretty straightforward; it only required the creation of a controller class and a view file. That was all.
In the next part, I'll be showing you how to use the pagination class that comes bundled with Code Igniter, in order to spawn across several pages all of the blog entries shown previously. Don't miss the upcoming article!
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