Question

Title pretty much sums it up. I’d like to write a script to import some data from a third party. Is there any way I can get either an instance of CodeIgniter’s Active Record class, or of a particular model inside of an a script that can be run from the command line?

Answer 1

Say you have your CodeIgnited application inside ignited/, you have your command line script running in cli/. Here is your folder layout:

ignited/
    application/
    system/
    index.php
cli/
    mycli.php

Now you want cli/mycli.php to use some model from ignited/

First, you should do something with your ignited app:

1. Modify your default controller (which is set in ignited/application/config/routes.php). For example ignited/application/controllers/welcome.php:

   class Welcome extends CI_Controller {
   
       public function index()
       {
           $this->load->view('welcome_message');
       }
   }
   

   add these code:

   if ($this->input->is_cli_request())
   {
       return;
   }
   

   so it would look like:

   class Welcome extends CI_Controller {
   
       public function index()
       {
           if ($this->input->is_cli_request())
           {
               return;
           }
           $this->load->view('welcome_message');
       }
   }
   

2. For testing, I created a test model ignited/application/models/do_nothing_model.php:

   class Do_nothing_model extends CI_Model {
   
       public function __construct()
       {
           parent::__construct();
       }
   
       public function do_nothing()
       {
           return "Do nothing";
       }
   
   }
   

OK! Now try this in cli/mycli.php:

require_once('../ignited/index.php');

$ci =& get_instance();

$ci->load->model('do_nothing_model');
echo $ci->do_nothing_model->do_nothing();

Drawback: unable to run the default action of your default controller in command line

UPDATE 2012-06-08: from CodeIgniter Wiki