MVC issues...trying to avoid interacting with the database from my controller

[eluser]sketchynix[/eluser]
You havent designed yourself into a hole at all. You are asking the right questions to get accustomed to using MVC. Since you are interacting with the database, you will want to create a model and load the model in the controller.

Without giving too much away...

Code:

function batch_mail_sender()
    {
      $this->load->model('your_model_name');

...

Code:

 else
        {
         // Form validation success, process away
          $this->your_model_name->GetAccounts($client, $status, $imported); /*set these variables equal to the form input values (be sure to clean the data)
*/
        }

Checkout the database class a bit on how to interact with it. There are a number of ways to query

Code:

function GetAccounts($client,$status,$imported){
    $select="SELECT FROM table.accounts WHERE client = ? AND status = ? AND imported = ?";
   $run = $this->db->query($select, array($client, $status,$imported));
}