Question

I am trying to use $this->load->add_package_path to add a new sub-application to my CI app. I can see how to use this for views and such: just put

$this->load->add_package_path("/mypackage");

in the controller ctor. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help, because I want to find controllers from the package path: it seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Is there somewhere else I can put a add_package_path call (such as index.php)?

Answer 1

Figured it out by tracing through CI. Turns out you can’t do this. You can put your own controllers in a subdirectory of /application/controllers, but you cannot put them someplace else: in particular, as http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/loader.html implies,

These elements can be libraries (classes) View files, Helpers, Models, or your own files.

“Your own files” not including controllers. I ended up being able to get it to look to the ENVIRONMENT setting in addition to APPPATH by making changes to CodeIgniter.php and Router.php. I don’t like making this kind of change, however, so I backed out the changes. I’ll put this here in case somebody else can benefit from it.

Router.php change:

function _validate_request($segments)
{
...
  // Does the requested controller exist in the root folder?
  if (file_exists(APPPATH.'controllers/'.$segments[0].'.php')
      || file_exists(ENVIRONMENT.'/controllers/'.$segments[0].'.php')) // New bit here
  {
    return $segments;
  }
....
}

CodeIgniter.php change, ’round about line 246:

if ( ! file_exists(APPPATH.'controllers/'.$RTR->fetch_directory().$RTR->fetch_class().'.php'))
{
  // New bit here
  if ( ! file_exists(ENVIRONMENT.'/controllers/'.$RTR->fetch_directory().$RTR->fetch_class().'.php'))
  {
    show_error('Unable to load your default controller. Please make sure the controller specified in your Routes.php file is valid.');
  }
  include(ENVIRONMENT.'/controllers/'.$RTR->fetch_directory().$RTR->fetch_class().'.php');
} else {
  include(APPPATH.'controllers/'.$RTR->fetch_directory().$RTR->fetch_class().'.php');
}