Creating a semi-static website with CodeIgniter ROUND 2

Published on Monday, 06 June 2011.

I'm a bit late with this article (just about 4 months xD).

The use case for a site like this is very limited and I don't think it's very common, but here's another way to use CodeIgniter for a static website. This article builds upon the previous related article Creating a semi-static website with CodeIgniter.

1. The controller

With this approach, we would use another controller: applications/controllers/staticx.php

2. The configuration

And a different configuration for the application/config/routes.php file.

3. A common layout

Almost finally, for this to work, a file named layout.php must exist inside the application/views/ directory.

A quick example:

4. Adding a page

Now, adding a new page to your static site is just a matter of creating the view file inside the application/views/ directory.

Examples:

If you request example.com/about, the controller will look for the file application/views/about.php

If you request example.com/products/electronics, the controller will look for the file in application/views/products/electronics.php.

So to summarize:

The following is an example view file:

You can notice some PHP comments at the beginning of the file. The controller parses those comments and converts them into variables that can be used in your application/views.layout.php file. You could modify the controller to include more variables (see get_available_page_data()). This is definitely not very optimized. But I think it can work for simple static websites which are not very common nowadays. :)