Pagination is a piece of cake in codeigniter but adding sorting columns is one heck of a task. This is how i did it

The Controller

<?php
class View extends Controller {
 function view() {
 parent::Controller();
 $this->load->helper('url');
 $this->load->library('pagination');
 }

 function orders() {
 //page title
 $data['title']='Page Title';

 //pagination configurations
 $config['total_rows'] = $this->db->get('dbname')-> num_rows();
 $config['per_page'] = '50';

 //get all the URI segments for pagination and sorting
 $segment_array=$this->uri->segment_array();
 $segment_count=$this->uri->total_segments();

 //for ordering the data items
 $do_orderby = array_search("orderby",$segment_array);

 //asc and desc sorting
 $asc = array_search("asc",$segment_array);
 $desc = array_search("desc",$segment_array);

 //get the records
 $this->db->order_by($this->uri->segment($do_orderby+1), $this->uri->segment($do_orderby+2));

 //getting the records and limit setting
 if (ctype_digit($segment_array[$segment_count])) {
 $data['page']=$segment_array[$segment_count];
 $this->db->limit($config['per_page'], $segment_array[$segment_count]);
 array_pop($segment_array);
 }
 else {
 $data['page']=NULL;
 $this->db->limit($config['per_page']);
 }
 $config['base_url'] = site_url(join("/",$segment_array));
 $config['uri_segment'] =count($segment_array)+1;
 $data['records'] = $this->invoice_model->getInvoiceList();

 //initialize pagination
 $this->pagination->initialize($config);
 //load the view
 $this->load->view('invoice',$data);
 }
}

The View

Writing the view would have been very easy without the sorting, just add the table class and tabulate the data. For sorting there has to be some extra steps taken. I’ll show just a part of the code

<?php
// For Pagination
 echo $this->pagination->create_links();
 ?>

<?php
// For Sorting
//default in descending order
$sort['col1']='desc';
$sort['col2']='desc';
$sort['col3']='desc';
//get the segment array
$segment_array=$this->uri->segment_array();
//search for the orderby string
$do_orderby = array_search("orderby",$segment_array);
//check to toggle asc and desc sorting in columns
if($do_orderby !== FALSE) {
 $sort[$segment_array[$do_orderby+1]]= $segment_array[$do_orderby + 2] == 'desc' ? 'asc' : 'desc' ;
}
 ?>

I will not discuss how to create the table. For linking the table header for sorting, check out the example below

<?php 
echo "<a href=\"".$url."/orderby/col1/{$sort['col1']}/".$page."\">"; 
?>
Col1</a>;

That would do the job. Questions, suggestions, problems, comments ? if any, do use the box below.

Note : Since there is a lot of traffic in this page, i have decided to write some more posts regarding codeigniter, please comment on this post if u have any suggestions or any particular topic to cover

Similar post in StudioUltimate. Next up is codeigniter with backbone.paginator. keep checking StudioUltimate for new awesome posts.