Question

I`m writing my first codeigniter (news) website.
I wonder what is the most appropriate way to do in this scenario:

Assume there is a link (method) called browse. When user clicks on that link the page shows a list of cities. When user click on some city the page shows available categories for that city. When some category is clicked the page shows sub categories for selected category.

When user click on some link of sub categories the page is reloaded and show a result based on selected city, category and sub category.

For example the URI will look like foo.bar/browse/city/rubrics/subrubric/

Which is the right way to do with codeigniter ?

Answer 1

CI works with URI segments.

For the above to work (without routing) your method could look something like:

function browse($city=null,$category=null,$subcat=null)
{
    if($category==null && $subcat==null)
    {
        $this->load->view('show_cities'):
    }

    if($city!=null && $category!=null && $subcat==null)
    {
        $this->load->view('show_categories');
    }

    if($city!=null && $category!=null && $subcat!=null)
    {
        $this->load->view('show_subcats');
    }

}

the load->view is just an example, you’d have some interaction with the model or whatever.

Now if you browse to site.com/browse/city/foo/bar you’ll see the subcats – CI passes the URI segments to the method.

There are of course other ways to do this, this is just one – and probably isn’t the most efficient.