Question

I am trying to use form validation for my form after user submits it. My view page has a variable that was passed by my controller. The view page works fine until I submit the form to validate. It gave me errors saying the variables passed by controller were undefined. I am not sure how to solve this. Any thoughts?

// Controller - status.php
public function load_view ()
{
    $this->load->model('project_query');
    $JNresults=$this->project_query->get_jobnumber();
    $data['JNresults']=$JNresults->result(); //pass to view
    $data['view']='form_view';
    $this->load->view('include/template',$data);
}

public function validate ()
{
    //validate form

    $data['error']='There are errors in your form.';
    $data['view']='form_view';
    $this->load->view('include/template',$data);
}

// View page - form_view.php
foreach ($JNresults as $row):    //work fine when first loaded. 
    echo $row->job_number;
endforeach;

echo form_open('status/validate');
echo validation_errors();
// input fields...
echo form_submit($submit);
echo form_close();

I get undefined variable $JNresults after I submit the form. I understand the view page don’t recognize it because it was passed from the controller. I just want to know if anyone can help me to solve this.

Answer 1

In your validate() method, you aren’t using $data['JNresults']=$JNresults->result(); so the variable $JNresults never gets populated in your view.

The solution:

Validate the form in load_view(), and get rid the of validate() method:

public function load_view()
{
    // set validation rules
    if ($this->form_validation->run())
    {
        // do something
    }

    $this->load->model('project_query');
    $JNresults=$this->project_query->get_jobnumber();
    $data['JNresults']=$JNresults->result(); //pass to view
    $data['view']='form_view';
    $this->load->view('include/template', $data);
}

Then change form_open('status/validate') to form_open() or form_open('status/load_view').

It looks like you aren’t using the $data['error'], which is fine because you don’t need it. validation_error() returns an empty string if there are no errors, so if you want to add an extra message you can just check if it’s empty:

if ($errors = validation_errors())
{
    echo 'There were errors:';
    echo $errors;
}