Making a Codeigniter CMS Dry

Question

I have seen a few sites that talk about how to make a an is logged in function to have it automatically run after every page load without having to call the function in every controller and wondered if anyone can point me to one of them because I lost the links to the few I saw.

I found this website that talks about how to achieve this:

philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2010/02/CodeIgniter-Base-Classes-Keeping-it-DRY

I created a MY_Controller that extends the CI_Controller as well as Frontend_Controller that extends the MY_Controller which controls the main site of my website and I also have a Backend_Controller that controls my CMS I am creating.

I also have a Login controller that extends teh Backend_Controller. The question I have is what if I want to run an if statement for the whole backend area to see if there is a session variable isset and if so then check to see if the value is numeric. If it is then have them redirect to the login and if not then have them redirect to the control panel controller which also extends the Backend_Controller. Do I do this if statement inside the Backend_Controller?

This is what I I thought up.

<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class Backend_Controller extends MY_Controller
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct(); 

        if (!!isset($this->session->userdata('xtr'))) && (!is_integer($this->session->userdata('user_variable_id'))))
        {
            redirect('login');
        }
    }
}

Is this correct way to achieve this and the right place to do so? If so, would I do anything specific to the login controller or the other controllers for managing users?

Or is there a better idea to work with this?

chris chris · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-10T20:35:06

This issue really isn't eccentric/unique to codeigniter this is more of an object oriented / class based question then anything else. The question in matter of opinion would be better asked how to extend a class from another class, and what can I actually put in the construct function of my class. But that being said and more of mute point, maybe me just being finiky means. That

Objects/Classes in this respect where you have the constructor/deconstructor. You can generally put variables and function calls. But Im not sure if an if statement will work, maybe if you make a function/method within the class that contains the same if-else in it, and have it do your bidding accordingly it would work better than having it in the construct.

However I am going based on what I read some time back, and a lot has changed since then..

I would say take a look at

What can I add in constructors in PHP?

and

http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.decon.php

which may be able to better aid you then I can currently with it, as it has been a while since I made a full class, I create more methods than anything now a days, and i know from PHP v 5.3.2 to 5.3.3 there was some changes in how the whole logic works due to compatibilities with older php and newer. So in all I guess this more a means of offering guidance than actually answering the question outright.

Im going to lean on the likely hood, that most likely dependent upon your version of PHP chances are an if-else, in the construct is not something you want to do, rather make a method thats called from the construct.

Making a Codeigniter CMS Dry

1 Answers