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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-06T16:14:23+00:00

I was looking for a flexible way to generate different sidebars in different pages.

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I was looking for a flexible way to generate different sidebars in different pages. The goal is to pass custom links to each sidebar. The template libraries seemed overkill for my application so I developed an easy solution. I’m not certain if it’s the best solution. My question is what do you think? Your advice is immensely appreciated!

1. In your controller add a private function that loads your sidebar view: 

/**
 * The function has 2 arguments. 
 * $title is the sidebar widget title.
 * $widget will contain an array of links to be added in the sidebar widget.
 */

private function sidebar($title, $widget)   
{
    $widget['title'] = $title;
    $this->load->view('includes/sidebar', $widget); 
}

2. In the controller functions that you want to load a custom sidebar, call the private function sidebar() and pass desired sidebar data into it.

Below is a controller function named edit used to edit posts. In the example I need to load a sidebar with options to view and delete the post I’m on:

function edit($post_id = '')
{
    //your code, form validation, etc...

    //Prepare sidebar widget links
    //Array key is link url, array value is link name
    $widget['links'] = array (
        'posts/single/' . $post_id => 'View post',
        'posts/remove/' . $post_id => 'Remove post'
    );
    $this->sidebar('Options', $widget);  //load sidebar  
}

3. Finally the sidebar view displaying custom data passed from the controller:

<div id="sidebar">
    <ul>
        <li class="widget">
            <div class="label"><?php echo $title; ?></div>
            <ul>
                <?php foreach ($links as $link => $value): ?>
                    <li><?php echo anchor($link, $value); ?></li>
                <?php endforeach; ?>
            </ul>
        </li>
    </ul>
</div>

Conclusion

Add the following code to any controller function for custom sidebar title and links:

$widget['links'] = array (
            'controller/function' => 'Link Name 1',
            'controller/function' => 'Link Name 2',
            'controller/function' => 'Link Name 3'
);
$this->sidebar('Widget Title', $widget);
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think that gets it done. I’m not an expert in CodeIgniter, but I can tell you that’s just fine. One thing you should always make sure is to validate the data passed to a function. In this case:

    private function sidebar($title=FALSE, $widget=FALSE) {
   if ($title && $widget) {
      //process
   }
   else
      return FALSE
   }
}

    Another way to do it is just to pass the links to the template (not the sidebar template, but your main template:

    $data['sidebar'] = array('link/link'=>'My Link');
$this->load->view('mytemplate', $data);

    And in the template you load the sidebar template and pass it the data:

    <html>
<!--All my html-->
<?php $this->load->view('includes/sidebar', $data['sidebar']); ?>
</html>

    This is just another option. But what you did is just fine.

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