Codeigniter form_helper getting database rows to be values in select menu

Question

I am writing a form, which has a select menu in it, I want the values to pulled from the database, so I thought it would be something along these lines:

My view

Answer 1

I personally hate to make assumptions in my Models about how my data will be used as that is the job of the controller. If you add a MY_array_helper.php and paste this in:

function array_to_select() {

$args = func_get_args();

$return = array();

switch(count($args)):

    case 3:
        foreach ($args[0] as $itteration):
            if(is_object($itteration)) $itteration = (array) $itteration;
            $return[$itteration[$args[1]]] = $itteration[$args[2]];
        endforeach;
    break;

    case 2:
        foreach ($args[0] as $key => $itteration):
            if(is_object($itteration)) $itteration = (array) $itteration;
            $return[$key] = $itteration[$args[1]];
        endforeach;
    break;

    case 1:
        foreach ($args[0] as $itteration):
            $return[$itteration] = $itteration;
        endforeach;
    break;

    default:
        return FALSE;
    break;

endswitch;

return $return;

}

Then you can do something like this:

function add_content() {
    $data = array();
    $this->is_logged_in();
    $this->load->model('category_model');
    $this->load->helper('array');
    $data['select_options'] = array_to_select($this->category_model->get_all_online(), 'id', 'title');
    $this->load->view('admin/content/add_content', $data);

}

That supports multi-dimensional arrays by passing in one or two keys, or single dimensional arrays by using the value as the value and the key.

Eg: array_to_select(array('value1', 'value2')) gives array('value1'=>'value1', 'value2'=>'value2')