I was surprised that there weren’t list helper functions in the html helper, so I wrote one. Below is a list helper for the html helper to generate ordered and unordered lists from an array.

The video tutorial I created for Code Igniter has been graciously linked to off the Code Igniter Videos page, and credit was given. Excellent, thanks Rick!

There’s been some interest in the past for video tutorials that are a bit more advanced.

What I’ve done is created a 20 minute (yeah, I wish it was shorter too) video tutorial where I tried to use some advanced techniques. In it, I tried to hit on AJAX usage, the scriptaculous library for both visual effects and an autocompleting search form, models, and unobtrusive javascript techniques.

This is not a gentle introduction into Code Igniter. I spend hardly any time explaining how to set up controllers and views. The target audience is really people who have hacked around with CI a bit, and are wanting some insight into how somebody else does it. I don’t claim my techniques are perfect, but I’m betting that a little insight into someone else’s mind might be useful, and I think generally web devs could benefit from more CSS and unobtrusive javascript.

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

I’ve written and posted a Microformats Helper on the Code Igniter wiki. This helper is meant to ease the creation of various well known microformats. Currently, the most popular hCard format is supported. Edit: license is also now supported.

Update May 31, 2008. There's been some interest in the post recently. CodeIgniter has evolved considerably since I first wrote this, and the Auth library as it stands now is not something that I wrote. There are many good alternatives for user authentication in CI.

A new release of the userauth management framework for Code Igniter has been made available.

Update May 31, 2008. There's been some interest in the post recently. CodeIgniter has evolved considerably since I first wrote this, and the Auth library as it stands now is not something that I wrote. There are many good alternatives for user authentication in CI.

Update: Peccavio has taken over this project from me. The new home is http://tomcode.com/inside/codeigniter/userauth/test/.

Code Igniter is meant to be a flexible, agile and light PHP framework.  As such, for philosophical reasons it does not include a user authentication or management component (it would look different for each user).  That said, user management is one of the most commonly requested features, and since I needed one for The Shakespeare XML Project, I decided to build my own Code Igniter User Authentication/Management Library.

After a brief posting in the Code Igniter Forums, I decided to play with some possible Code Ingiter icons.

The Punchline

I’ve finally got around to releasing the source code first Code Igniter based project - BambooInvoice. BambooInvoice is free, open-source, invoicing software based on Code Igniter. It is intended for small businesses and independent contractors. My priorities are ease of use, user-interface, and beautiful code.

It’s buzzword compliant: AJAX, unobtrusive DOM scripting, script.aculo.us, valid XHTML strict, etc. The entire application degrades gracefully for users without javascript enabled, and complies with WAI priority two.

To get the code, visit BambooInvoice. There’s also a working demo available if you just want to play.

"Helps out where you want help, then gets the hell out of your way". That is the highest compliment I can think of. If you are a PHP programmer, and you haven’t taken a moment to look at some of the various upcoming PHP frameworks, do yourself a favour and stop reading now, and go to codeigniter.

PHP has other promising frameworks, but for my money, Code Igniter is the best. Yes Rails has gotten a lot of hype lately (most of it deserved in my opinion), but if you’re looking for a no-fuss, no-muss framework to help you get stuff done in PHP - check out Code Igniter. In addition to a mature framework (it’s built on top of the excellent Expression Engine code), it is actively developed and improved (thank you Rick Ellis), and has a vibrant, active and helpful community built around it.

When I started writing BambooInvoice, I began the project using the Zend framework. It was nice(ish) but clearly unfinished. Then I discovered CakePHP. Now Cake is a very impressive piece of work, but it still felt to me too much like I was programming in "Cake", and not in PHP. Code Igniter is like Linux, it helps me do what I need to do, and trusts that I know what I’m doing.

So there you go, I've officially added my vote to the growing legions.