Deleting table records

[eluser]ozy123[/eluser]
Hi guys,

Probably a dumb question but how do I pass values from a table to a controller via a delete button?

So I have a table in my view which retrieves values from the database and displays:

User Date
delete Jack 21/05/2012
delete john 20/05/2012

And I've added a delete button like so:

echo '<td align="center">' . "<a href='/codeigniter/auth/delete_avail/" . $date . "'>Delete</a>" . "</td>";

But I have no idea how to retrieve the date from the row to pass as the variable $date to the controller?

Thanks for any help.