Need something lightweight? Something that has a small footprint? Well those are the exact messages EllisLab, Inc. are trying to deliver to web developers. CodeIgniter is a very small, fast and efficient, easy to learn framework that helps rapidly deploy bottom up PHP applications. Similar to PHPCake, its’ goals are to move straight forward to the real development work and cruise pass the routine back-end work such as database configurations, session handling, and permalinks.
MVC Example
C.I. uses a programming model called an MVC (Model-View-Controller). The model provides the data in which the controller processes it and the view displays the data processed by the controller. This model helps keep applications organized, OOP oriented, and separates the developer from the programmer. Though the initial deployment does not have a template engine enabled, it does offer a template parser class through its extensive library.
The framework’s library is what really makes CodeIgniter a real winner. Several classes help start up your application such as a sql/odbc query class, pagination class, session class (handled via cookies), benchmarking class, XML-RPC class and several others that really help launch bottom up applications. With an extensive up to date user guide, it definitely makes learning all the libraries a breeze. If there’s anything too complicated, C.I.’s forums become a really great resource to receive help and collaborate with others. Think of CodeIgniter as the WordPress for Custom PHP applications, its not hard setting up and and its easy to get started; you’re not bound to many rules (unlike other PHP frameworks). There’s a ton of 3rd party plugins and libraries that bring CodeIgniter into the future of rapid web based application development. With its great debugging tools, auto-loading libraries, and online community support, its definitely worth testing future applications on this fantastic framework.
http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/ <– Excellent documentation
I just recently started using CodeIgniter for a recently iPhone Web App (http://bowl.mattlo.info) for testing purposes and now going to start using it for my clients. The only thing I’m getting used to is when I’m using AJAX to send info via URI, I have to use a permalink-style link because CodeIgniter does not allow you to use $_GET in PHP. Though you can disable that rule, I’d rather just get used to the permalink structure of passing data. I will write a more extensive C.I. article once I really master the framework. This is an extremely brief overview of CodeIgniter and I strongly encourage you try out the framework yourself!