A: 

If you want to change the default behavior of the post() method, you can extend the core Input library, or if you're lazy you can just change line 278 (or so) of the Input library to read:

/**
* Fetch an item from the POST array
*
* @access   public
* @param    string
* @param    bool
* @return   string
*/
function post($index = '', $xss_clean = TRUE)
{
    return $this->_fetch_from_array($_POST, $index, $xss_clean);
}

The only difference here is that I've changed the $xss_clean variable to TRUE instead of FALSE. Now you can turn off global XSS filtering and it will automatically filter inputs unless you specify false as the second parameter in your call to the Input library's post() method. Just one method down is the get() method, and you can change that in the same way.

However, if I were you, I'd just extend the native library, because there's a good chance you'll have forgotten about this by the time you update CodeIgniter, and then you'll suddenly be wondering why you're getting XSS attacked. That would look like this:

class MY_Input extends CI_Input {

    function My_Input()
    {
        parent::CI_Input();
    }

    function post($index = '', $xss_clean = TRUE)
    {
        parent::post($index, $xss_clean);
    }
}

You can learn more about extending libraries here:

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/general/creating_libraries.html

treeface
Thanks for you help. I went down this route.
Von Schmytt
A: 

you can temporarily turn it off

$this->config->set_item('global_xss_filtering', false);

$c = $this->input->post('content'); then turn it back on..

$this->config->set_item('global_xss_filtering', true);

Johnny Tops
OP, I'd be interested to see if this works. Based on my understanding of CI's XSS filtering scheme, I think this would actually not have the desired effect. I believe CI does its XSS filtering of the entire $_POST variable when the controller is initiated, so changing the config after the fact would have little affect. Still..it's worth a try.
treeface
Hi, this didn't seem to work with my CI installation. Thanks for responding though!
Von Schmytt