Do I use a helper, library or place my datepicker code in a model in codeigniter?

Question

Heres my code:

//Setup days
 $data['days']['FALSE'] = 'Day';

 //Setup months
 $data['months'] = array('FALSE' => 'Month',
                 '1'  => 'Jan',
                 '2'  => 'Feb',
                 '3'  => 'Mar',
                 '4'  => 'Apr',
                 '5'  => 'May',
                 '6'  => 'Jun',
                 '7'  => 'Jul',
                 '8'  => 'Aug',
                 '9'  => 'Sep',
                 '10' => 'Oct',
                 '11' => 'Nov',
                 '12' => 'Dec'
                );


 for($i=1;$i<=31;$i++){
    $data['days'][$i] = $i;
 }

 //Setup years
 $start_year = date("Y",mktime(0,0,0,date("m"),date("d"),date("Y")-100)); //Adjust 100 to however many year back you want
 $data['years']['FALSE'] = 'Year';

 for ($i=$start_year;$i<=date("Y");++$i) {
    $data['years'][$i] = $i;
}

and here's my if statement:

if($this->form_validation->run()){
    $month = $this->input->post('months');
    $day = $this->input->post('days');
    $year = $this->input->post('years');

    $birthday = date("m-d-Y H:i:s",mktime(0,0,0,$month,$day,$year));
 } 

here's my corresponding code in my form in the view:

   <p>
        <label for="birthday">Birthday: </label>
        <?php echo form_dropdown('days',$days). " " . form_dropdown('months',$months). " " . form_dropdown('years',$years); ?>
    </p>

When I put the datepicker code directly in my controller the drop down on my form shows correctly. I wanted to be neat with my coding so decided to create a model and attempted to make calls from my controller but I get the undefined variable error a few times when my view tries to display the form.

I've done some research and wondering whether it's better to make my datepicker a helper "datepicker_helper.php" put the code in there and load it in my controller.

Is this the best way to do this?

If so can somebody give me a example of how I can do this? If there is another way can somebody show me please?

Thanks in advance.. I'm here to learn..

Answer 1

A lot of developers - myself included - have developed their own version of this code. There are two issues I want to point out here.

First of all, you've lulled yourself into a false sense of security here. Bounded select elements can not and will not guarantee that every request includes a valid date. Never trust input. Always validate. Extend the Form_validation class with your own date validation functions.

Second, making a user pull three dropdowns (without the mitigating guarantee of a valid date in all requests) is pretty crappy UX, especially in cases where the user needs to populate multiple dates (start date/end date, milestone dates, etc).

After I came to understand these two things, I refactored this out of my site. Now my date fields are input type text, with a label that specifies the expected format of the date. My Form_validation class is extended to validate date fields. And I've added a real datepicker to my forms.

Answer 2

A helper sounds like it would work best for this. To do that look at the documentation and this SO question

On a sidenote, what I do with such generic code that may be used in more than one framework, application, or location, is the following:

• have a completely separate php file, say My_Utils.php
• create a class in there full of static functions (or use Namespaces if >= PHP 5.3)
• you do this to make sure your functions aren't defined elsewhere in any framework/other code
• include that in your CodeIgniter's index.php before any CodeIgniter initialization/routing
• this way they're available all across its codebase (controllers, views)
• use them as required
• keep it in a central location in each web server for maintenability and easy inclusion

In this case your form_dropdown would simply be a static function in said file:

class My_Utils {

    public static function form_dropdown($param1, $param2) {

    }

}

And you'd use it:

echo My_Utils::form_dropdown('days',$days)