How to learn CodeIgniter

Hi I have recently developed interest in coding, specially in Codeigniter as I have heard some really good things about it. But my question here  is not to ask "What to do how?"

I will be honest. I have a very basic php knowledge, but I am a very quick learner. So far all I have learnt about php, is online. When it comes to codeigniter, everything was working fine until I have to do with urls (I cannot pull my products from database as I don't have url for them).

Finally I realized if I have to work with Codeigniter, I will have to learn how things work and not from scripts available to download.

MY QUESTION: Being a newcomer, where should I start from? I learn php first or OOP or get some classes from some institute. I thought to ask it here as someone with good hands on Codeigniter would be able to guide me to the right direction.

Please help.

the right way is to read the documentaion, it has samples as you progress reading it.

good luck

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Hey, welcome to CodeIgniter and the forum!

I wouldn't worry too much about learning more than the basics of OOP for now. CodeIgniter is perfectly usable and productive under a "procedural" paradigm (pretty much what OOP is not). You should learn in general the concepts of decision-making (IF-ELSE, SWITCH, etc.) and looping (WHILE, FOR, etc.). It's particularly important to understand how important loops are in processing. Loops are how you go through a list of products, for example, putting each product on its own line on the screen, and creating the URL that will link to each product.

But you know, coding is a lot like cooking or playing the piano. You can take lessons and courses, but ultimately, you only learn if you practice, practice, practice. Consider starting with some very basic application. Perhaps you could write a contact list, an application where you add the names and email addresses of people you know. You would have to have add, edit, and delete methods, but you can keep it simple. You didn't mention SQL. You'll have to learn at least some basics about databases too.

Start hacking, use your google, and when you get stuck, ask us. Good luck!

Hey, don't work without a PHP debugger. Several free IDEs have this features built in. Two are NetBeans and CodeLobster. Without a debugger, it's like you're driving with a blindfold on -- you are going to crash!

kind of obvious but start with the tutorial in the codeigniter docs and do the tutorial more then once.  sign up for http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/codeigniter and look at the codeigniter questions regularly. try to answer some  questions that you don't know the answer to - this will 'force' you to learn more about codeigniter, and you can read the other responses to see how else something can be accomplished.

google "robert martin" and "clean code". watch every video / lecture on youtube and vimeo, especially where he goes over refactoring and naming. his examples are going to be in java but it reads almost exactly like codeigniter.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_q...clean+code

there a series of free codeigniter videos on net tuts. its old and they were created for codeigniter 1.7 -- but the basic concepts are all the same, and they  are great tutorials http://code.tutsplus.com/series/codeigni...-net-17602
warning that if you look up the author of those videos he now works with only laravel . oh well. there's also some paid courses on net tuts for codeigniter which are very good.

at the same time -- grind through basic php courses to keep increasing your php vocabulary.

my personal opinion that is very much in the minority (so don't flame me people because i already know you don't agree ) -- ignore any tutorial that insists you have to create a my_controller before doing anything else. start with the framework as it is without 'personalizing' it. ignore any tutorial that tries to be too clever like combining inserts and updates in one method.  there are a lot of books and tutorials that are just the author trying to show off. do not worry about DRY its overrated. do not worry about saving two lines of code. your focus should always be to make your code readable.  then as you refactor, your code will become DRY while still being understandable.

the right way is to read the documentaion, it has samples as you progress reading it.

good luck

Thank you very much. I will go through the guide again.

Hey, welcome to CodeIgniter and the forum!

I wouldn't worry too much about learning more than the basics of OOP for now. CodeIgniter is perfectly usable and productive under a "procedural" paradigm (pretty much what OOP is not). You should learn in general the concepts of decision-making (IF-ELSE, SWITCH, etc.) and looping (WHILE, FOR, etc.). It's particularly important to understand how important loops are in processing. Loops are how you go through a list of products, for example, putting each product on its own line on the screen, and creating the URL that will link to each product.

But you know, coding is a lot like cooking or playing the piano. You can take lessons and courses, but ultimately, you only learn if you practice, practice, practice. Consider starting with some very basic application. Perhaps you could write a contact list, an application where you add the names and email addresses of people you know. You would have to have add, edit, and delete methods, but you can keep it simple. You didn't mention SQL. You'll have to learn at least some basics about databases too.

Start hacking, use your google, and when you get stuck, ask us. Good luck!

Thanks @RoverSF.. Learning loop & while seems to be nice as they are required by CI. I will do that. I already have NetBeans.[url=http://forum.codeigniter.com/user-178.html][/url]

kind of obvious but start with the tutorial in the codeigniter docs and do the tutorial more then once.  sign up for http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/codeigniter and look at the codeigniter questions regularly. try to answer some  questions that you don't know the answer to - this will 'force' you to learn more about codeigniter, and you can read the other responses to see how else something can be accomplished.

google "robert martin" and "clean code". watch every video / lecture on youtube and vimeo, especially where he goes over refactoring and naming. his examples are going to be in java but it reads almost exactly like codeigniter.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_q...clean+code

there a series of free codeigniter videos on net tuts. its old and they were created for codeigniter 1.7 -- but the basic concepts are all the same, and they  are great tutorials http://code.tutsplus.com/series/codeigni...-net-17602
warning that if you look up the author of those videos he now works with only laravel . oh well. there's also some paid courses on net tuts for codeigniter which are very good.

at the same time -- grind through basic php courses to keep increasing your php vocabulary.

my personal opinion that is very much in the minority (so don't flame me people because i already know you don't agree ) -- ignore any tutorial that insists you have to create a my_controller before doing anything else. start with the framework as it is without 'personalizing' it. ignore any tutorial that tries to be too clever like combining inserts and updates in one method.  there are a lot of books and tutorials that are just the author trying to show off. do not worry about DRY its overrated. do not worry about saving two lines of code. your focus should always be to make your code readable.  then as you refactor,  your code will become DRY while still being understandable.

Thanks @cartalot.. I will check out those videos too.. I have been watching Anthony Vipond's tutorials for sometime..