[eluser]obiron2[/eluser]
Welcome to the CI community. I have to say that this is the most helpful and friendly group that I am a member of. Even when people ask dumharse questions they are treated with kindness and respect.
CI doesn't change the rules about programming in PHP, just the techniques and locations of the code.
If you want to fetch data from a database you still have to connect to the DB, run a query and work with the results.
If you want to create a form, you still need to output the <FORM> </FORM> tags.
Anything that you can do in PHP, you can do in CodeIgniter (OK, GTK based desktop apps may be a bit tricky coz it is designed to process URLs)
When designing a web page you need to do three things.
What data do I need = Model.
What business logic do I need = Controller.
What should it look like on the page = View.
For beginners, as an introduction, I would suggest you code in straight procedural PHP (or OOP if you are already used to it) and do the following:
Create a new controller and function in the controller.
Decide what information you need and put it in a model
Process the data into a nice relational format (normally a multi dimensional array)
Call a view file
create your HTML in the view with PHP callouts <? ... ?> whenever you need to get some data from the array.
Perhaps don't jump straight into a production system, but play with some of the functions while reading the user guide to understand what CI can and can't do for you.
It will seem long winded at first to put your code into three different files, but as your system grows you will see the benefits.
good luck and post back here if you ever need any help
Obiron
