Building a Content Management System with Code Igniter

Introduction

If you’re a PHP programmer who’s seeking a framework that lets you build full-blown web applications very rapidly, without having to deal with complex installation issues, then you might want to look at Code Igniter (http://codeigniter.com). It is a friendly software package developed in PHP 4 that permits you to create web-based programs by using the Model-View-Controller pattern.

Naturally, if you've read the articles that preceded this one, then you have the background necessary to start building object-based PHP applications with Code Igniter. This framework provides developers with the right tools for constructing anything that they can think of, ranging from simple data validation programs to powerful database-driven applications.

Now that I've mentioned the remarkable capabilities offered by Code Igniter when it comes to rapid application development, you will no doubt remember that in the previous article I created a simple web-based program that could send email messages by utilizing a regular HTML form.

Regardless of the intrinsic simplicity of this application, it provided a pretty useful demonstration of how easy it is to build such an application with the MVC approach. Basically, this email program was comprised of only one controller class, and two view files as well. It really was that simple.

However, until now I've only shown you how to perform certain specific tasks, such as validating user-supplied data and sending email, handling and paginating database records, and so forth. But, as you may guess, all of these isolated procedures can be used perfectly together to develop a larger, real-world application.

Therefore, with this idea in mind, this last episode of the series will be focused on building a primitive content management system with Code Igniter. This particular CMS will come in handy for adding comments about a group of popular movies previously stored in a MySQL database table.

Now we will start developing this movie-related management system. Hollywood, here we go!