Question

In CodeIgniter, is it okay to load libraries & models like the following:

$my_library = new my_library();

The reason I want to do this is because the editor I use (Komodo Edit) does not recognize the class for use with autocomplete when using $this->load.

Answer 1

In certain cases it is acceptable to load classes like that however you should stick to using the CodeIgniter loader class unless it’s absolutely necessary not to. I would urge you to convert your libraries and models to be compatible with the CodeIgniter loader class.

I understand what you mean when you say the autocomplete is not working. I use NetBeans and this is a problem I ran into as well. I did a little digging and although it’s much less documented for Komodo Edit, the solution to getting autocomplete working correctly is very similar to getting it working with NetBeans.

First, here is a Komodo Edit bug report documenting the problem that you are having. It’s been open since 2008 so it’s likely it won’t ever be baked directly into the application since there is a simple workaround.

Here is a blog post detailing the workaround. The idea is that you create a dummy PHP file in the root of your project containing a number of comments referencing the properties and methods of the core CodeIgniter classes. Komodo Edit will then reference the file and add the properties and methods to it’s code completion.

The blog post looks a little outdated, but you should be able to easily modify it to get it working with whatever version of CodeIgniter you are using.

And if you’re curious, here is a blog post detailing the same solution for Netbeans.