Question

Basically I want my multi-part form’s controller to have a single function that gives the post data to the other functions like preview and edit.

The function is below:

function get_post_data()
{
  $post_data_array = array();
  // declaration of all form field names
  $variable_array = array('form_field_1', 'form_field_2', ... 'form_field_n');

  for ($i = 0; $i < count($variable_array); $i++) {
    $variable_value = $this->input->post($variable_array[$i]);
    // turn them into an easy-to-use array
    $post_data_array[$variable_array[$i]] = $variable_value;
  }
  return $post_data_array;
}

So that functions will access it as:

function show_preview_form()
{
  $this->load->view('preview_form_view', $this->get_post_data() );
}

function send_to_database()
{
  $data_array = $this->get_post_data();
  $this->Model->insert_to_database($data_array['form_field_1'], ...);
}

Currently it does not work. Firebug returns a 500 Internal Status Error status. Do you guys know how to solve this?

I really don’t want to repeat the long get_post_data in every function that needs it.

Answer 1

you need to assign a empty array to $post_data_array before can add values to it.

in the beginning of get_post_data function add $post_data_array = array();

update:

its probably also a good idea to change get_post_data to _get_post_data that way its not accessible directly from the url.
http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/general/controllers.html#private