how to check whether this is returning something or not............

[eluser]noname525[/eluser]
vv

[eluser]solid9[/eluser]
show us your controller.

[eluser]noname525[/eluser]
vv

[eluser]solid9[/eluser]
Are you sure the table is not empty?

Try this first,

Code:

$user=$this->session->userdata('userids')
echo $user;

See the $user if it's empty or not.

[eluser]noname525[/eluser]
vv

[eluser]solid9[/eluser]
Or you can try this in your model,

Code:

function edit_member($user){
       $sql="select * from userarticles where userid='$user'";
       $result=mysql_query($sql);
            if($result)
             {
              $res=mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
              return $res;
             }
     }

Noticed the single quotes that I incorporated in the SELECT statement.
Try it.

By the way it suppose to show some error.
Did you currently see an error message?

[eluser]solid9[/eluser]
[quote author="hunter" date="1333080210"]hey, solid9 dude i extremely apologize, the table name was incorrect, now i got the results but if the table name is incorrect is there a mechanism to display errors rather than a white screen........ [/quote]

Yes there is.
http://php.net/manual/en/function.error-reporting.php

You can configue that in the index.php of codeIgniter.

Or you can check the error_log of your website.
Check your CPANEL for this.