How do I send form data to a CodeIgniter library?

Question

I have a custom Auth library in CodeIgniter and want to send data from the signup form to it.

I know to send the data to a controller I do:

echo form_open('login/validate');

and the data is sent to the validate function of the login controller. So how do I send the data to a library rather than a controller?

Answer 1

Make your controller to communicate with your auth library or write a filter to pick up the parameters coming from the form.

Answer 2

Libraries in Codeigniter aren't really meant to be used the way you're asking us to help you use them for. Libraries are nothing more than one or more PHP classes that contain functions and variables to perform specific actions.

You should really be doing all of the communication stuff inside of your controller and then sending data from the controller to your library functions. Don't break convention.

So if you're wanting to pass POST data to a library function here is some example code (change to suit your own application):

$this->load->library('example_library');  
$username = $this->input->post('username');  
$password = $this->input->post('password');  

$this->example_library->set_username($username);
$this->example_library->set_password($password);
$this->example_library->set_method('clean_then_login');
$this->example_library->do_login();

Basically the above gets data sent to the controller via the POST method (from your views form) and then calls some functions from within the example library, sets a username, password method for handling login details and then performs the login.

Another handy bit of information is that you can change how you reference your libraries by doing a small adjustment to the library loading code above:

$this->load->library('example_library', 'example');

This would allow you to reference your library without it being so long like below:

$this->example->set_username($username);

Hope this helps you understand how you can take data passed to your controller and then send it to a library function and or functions.