Pagination with like or_like getting row count

[eluser]Unknown[/eluser]
Hi everyone I am having some difficulty implementing pagination to a view where I am searching for data using like + or_like.

I need some help getting the count of my queried data and passing it to the model.

My search function works perfectly but I can't return the count to my pagination config.

How can I get the count of rows to where $config['per_page']. Be patient with me I'm still learning and get easily lost.

Desperately need help:

Controller:

Code:

// load pagination class
    $config['base_url'] = base_url().'/search'.$this->uri->segment(2).'/index/';
    $config['total_rows'] = $this->Search_model->search(strtolower($this->uri->segment(2)));
    $config['per_page'] = '3';
  $config['full_tag_open'] = '<div id="pagination">';
            $config['full_tag_close'] = '</div>';

    $this->pagination->initialize($config);
    
    $limit = $config['per_page'];
    $offset = $this->uri->segment(4);
        
        if($this->uri->segment(2)){
        $this->load->model('Search_model');
        $viewdata['search_results'] = $this->Search_model->search(strtolower($this->uri->segment(2)),$limit,$offset);
        }

Model:

Code:

function search($searchquery, $limit, $offset) {

        $this->db->from('content');
        $this->db->like('title', $searchquery);
        $this->db->or_like('content', $searchquery);
        $query = $this->db->limit($limit, $offset)->get();
        
        $results = Array();
        foreach ($query->result() as $row) {


            $results[] = Array(
                
                'title' => '<a href="' . base_url() . $row-&gt;anchor_url . ' ">' . strip_tags($row->title) . '</a>',
                'link' =>  base_url() . $row->anchor_url,
                'text' => str_ireplace($searchquery, '<b>' . $searchquery . '</b>', strip_tags(neatest_trim($row->content,220,$searchquery,120,120)))
            );
        }
        return $results;