form validation question

[eluser]rsmarsha[/eluser]
@djvoc It's not finished yet which is why I left that bit out.

@SitesByJoe Thanks for the tips, not sure I follow the redirect bit though. Your redirect directs to the insert method in your model? Does the model then redirect to a view? Oh and I moved the validation into a config file.

@cideveloper Thanks for the advice, I've moved the categories now. I do have code in place to remember the fields, as you can see from the view.

Maybe you can all look at the new code?

Controller

Code:

public function write () {
        if ($this->form_validation->run('write_blog_post') === FALSE)
        {
            $data = array(
                'categories' => $this->blog_model->get_categories()
            );
            $this->_view('admin/blog_write_post', $data);
        }
        else
        {
            $this->blog_model->insert_post();            
            $this->_view('admin/blog_post_submitted', $data);
        }
    }

Model

Code:

public function get_categories() {
        $this->db->select("id, name", FALSE);
        $this->db->order_by("name asc");
        $query = $this->db->get('blog_categories');
        if ($query->num_rows() > 0)
        {
            $categories = array();
            foreach ($query->result() AS $result) {
                $categories[$result->id] = $result->name;
            }
            return $categories;
        }
        else
        {
            return FALSE;
        }
    }
    
    public function insert_post() {
        $data = array(
            'title'        => $this->input->post('title'),
            'content'    => $this->input->post('content'),
            'user_id'    => '1',
            'posted'    => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
            'category'    => $this->input->post('category')
        );
        $this->db->insert('blog_posts', $data);
    }

View

Code:

<h3>Write a blog post</h3>
&lt;?php echo validation_errors(); ?&gt;
&lt;?php
$data = array(
    'id' => 'write_post'
);
echo form_open('admin/blog/write', $data);
$data = array(
    'name' => 'title',
    'placeholder' => 'Title',
    'value' => set_value('title')
);
echo form_input($data);
$data = array(
    'name' => 'content',
    'placeholder' => 'Content',
    'value' => set_value('content')
);
echo form_textarea($data);
echo form_label('Category', 'category');
echo form_dropdown('category', $categories, set_value('category'));
echo form_submit('submit', 'Submit Post');
?&gt;

The view looks a bit messy and I'm sure there's a much cleaner way of doing it so any tips/advice welcome. One idea I had was to move the $data arrays used to create the form fields into one large array built in the controller and then just access them in the view when echo'ing the create form code.

I can't seem to get the order by clause in the get_categories method in the model, to work right. At the moment it's just ordering by name but I setup a default field in the table with 0 or 1 allowed and 1 sets the default category.

I want to order like

Code:

$this->db->order_by("default desc, name asc");

But if I do that the num_rows bit below it throws errors as a none object.

Also I am not sure if I'm running the insert method from the model right. I moved the data array from the controller into the model and as it's post data I don't need any parameters. If I'm getting it right that is.

Very new to CI so all the advice is much appreciated, just be patient if I'm doing something stupid.