How to make a link using Codeigniter.

Here we learn how to use anchor method that is URL helper of Codeigniter.We already discussed in my previous post URL structure of Codeigniter. It creates a anchor tag in HTML view.

We can create anchor links in two ways.

• by using anchor function available in URL helper of Codeigniter.
• by using site_url function available in URL helper of Codeigniter.

Below examples shows how to make HTML link Using anchor function

anchor tag with two parameters,parameter 1 takes segments of the targe page,parameter 2 takes link text.

1
2
3
4

<?php
echo anchor('controller/method/parameter1', 'Link Text');
// <a href="http://example.com/index.php/controller/method/parameter1">Link Text</a>
?>

anchor tag with additional attributes like title

1
2
3

<?php
echo anchor('controller/method/parameter1', 'Link  with Title attribute',array('title'=>'Link Title'));// <a href="http://example.com/index.php/controller/method/parameter1" title="Link Title">Link  with Title attribute</a>
?>

anchor tag with javascript attribute.

1
2
3
4
5

<?php
echo anchor('controller/method/parameter1', 'Link  with Title and javascript',array('title'=>'Link Title','onclick'=>"alert('hi');return false;"));
//<a href="http://example.com/index.php/controller/method/parameter1" title="Link Title" onclick="alert('hi');return false;">Link  with Title and javascript</a>
 
?>

remember anchor tag won’t create internel page link.

Below examples show how to make HTML link using site_url function

We can use site_url output as href attribute and can make internel links also.

1
2

<p><a href="<?php echo site_url('controller/method/parameter1'); ?>">with site_url function </a></p>
<p><a href="<?php echo site_url('controller/method/parameter1'); ?>" title="link title">with site_url function and title attribute </a></p>

Test it in your local system

To test these functions ,just download the example files and paste into your codeigniter root directory. run the example.

if you have any queries you can mail me.

Preview

Here we discuss about the codeigniter URL structur. Codeigniter mainly preferes search engine freindly. that is segmented method. by default it won’t support get method.you can see my previous post for enabling get method in Codeigniter. It comes with URL helper that has many built in functions helps.

To run below examples,we use default welcome controller and welcome_message view. You can see below image where it located.when you run it executes welcome.php controller and loads view welcome_message.php

Codeigniter Download example source code

To run below examples,we have to load the URL helper by adding below line to controller constructor.

1

<?php $this->load->helper('url');?>

base_url() returns web site url.

1
2
3
4

<?php
//output is http://example.com/
echo base_url();
?>

index_page() returns the index_page in config variable.by default it returns index.php. when you enable mod_write for Codeigniter index_page empty. Then base_url and site_url are equal.

1
2
3
4

<?php
// out put could be index.php
echo index_page()
 ?>

site_url() return base_url with index_page in config variable. That is index.php by default.

1
2
3
4

  <?php
//output could be http://example.com/index.php
echo site_url();
?>

site_url() takes two kinds of parameters either a string of segmets or array of segments.

Below example takes string of segments as a parameter.

1
2
3
4
5

<?php
//output could be http://example.com/index.php/desired_controller/controller_method
echo site_url('/desired_controller/controller_method');
//out put could be http://example.com/index.php/desired_controller/controller_method/parameter1/parameter2
echo site_url('/desired_controller/controller_method/parameter1/parameter2');?>

Below example takes array of segments as a parameter. be aware that precedence importence.

1
2
3
4

  <?php
$segments=array('desired_controller','controller_method','parameter1','parameter2');
echo site_url($segments);
//out put could be http://example.com/index.php/desired_controller/controller_method/parameter1/parameter2 ?>

Codeigniter site folder structure