summaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/user_guide/general/drivers.html
blob: f47929cf476b1256c278243cfff4a3359341eb3f (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Using CodeIgniter Drivers : CodeIgniter User Guide</title>

<style type='text/css' media='all'>@import url('../userguide.css');</style>
<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' media='all' href='../userguide.css' />

<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/nav.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/prototype.lite.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/moo.fx.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../nav/user_guide_menu.js"></script>

<meta http-equiv='expires' content='-1' />
<meta http-equiv= 'pragma' content='no-cache' />
<meta name='robots' content='all' />
<meta name='author' content='ExpressionEngine Dev Team' />
<meta name='description' content='CodeIgniter User Guide' />

</head>
<body>

<!-- START NAVIGATION -->
<div id="nav"><div id="nav_inner"><script type="text/javascript">create_menu('../');</script></div></div>
<div id="nav2"><a name="top"></a><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="myHeight.toggle();"><img src="../images/nav_toggle_darker.jpg" width="154" height="43" border="0" title="Toggle Table of Contents" alt="Toggle Table of Contents" /></a></div>
<div id="masthead">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%">
<tr>
<td><h1>CodeIgniter User Guide Version 2.2.0</h1></td>
<td id="breadcrumb_right"><a href="../toc.html">Table of Contents Page</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</div>
<!-- END NAVIGATION -->


<!-- START BREADCRUMB -->
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%">
<tr>
<td id="breadcrumb">
<a href="http://codeigniter.com/">CodeIgniter Home</a> &nbsp;&#8250;&nbsp;
<a href="../index.html">User Guide Home</a> &nbsp;&#8250;&nbsp;
Using CodeIgniter Drivers
</td>
<td id="searchbox"><form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search"><input type="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" id="as_sitesearch" value="ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/" />Search User Guide&nbsp; <input type="text" class="input" style="width:200px;" name="q" id="q" size="31" maxlength="255" value="" />&nbsp;<input type="submit" class="submit" name="sa" value="Go" /></form></td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- END BREADCRUMB -->

<br clear="all" />


<!-- START CONTENT -->
<div id="content">

<h1>Using CodeIgniter Drivers</h1>


<p>Drivers are a special type of Library that has a parent class and any number of potential child classes.  Child classes have access to the parent class, but not their siblings.  Drivers provide an elegant syntax  in your <a href="controllers.html">controllers</a> for libraries that benefit from or require being broken down into discrete classes.</p>

<p>Drivers are found in the <dfn>system/libraries</dfn> folder, in their own folder which is identically named to the parent library class.  Also inside that folder is a subfolder named <kbd>drivers</kbd>, which contains all of the possible child class files.</p>

<p>To use a driver you will initialize it within a controller using the following initialization function:</p>

<code>$this->load->driver('<var>class name</var>'); </code>

<p>Where <var>class name</var> is the name of the driver class you want to invoke.  For example, to load a driver named "Some Parent" you would do this:</p>

<code>$this->load->driver('<var>some_parent</var>');</code>

<p>Methods of that class can then be invoked with:</p>

<code>$this->some_parent->some_method();</code>

<p>The child classes, the drivers themselves, can then be called directly through the parent class, without initializing them:</p>

<code>$this->some_parent->child_one->some_method();<br />
$this->some_parent->child_two->another_method();</code>

<h2>Creating Your Own Drivers</h2>

<p>Please read the section of the user guide that discusses how to <a href="creating_drivers.html">create your own drivers</a>.</p>



</div>
<!-- END CONTENT -->


<div id="footer">
<p>
Previous Topic:&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="creating_libraries.html">Creating Libraries</a>
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<a href="#top">Top of Page</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;
<a href="../index.html">User Guide Home</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&middot;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Next Topic:&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="creating_drivers.html">Creating Drivers</a>
</p>
<p><a href="http://codeigniter.com">CodeIgniter</a> &nbsp;&middot;&nbsp; Copyright &#169; 2006 - 2014 &nbsp;&middot;&nbsp; <a href="http://ellislab.com/">EllisLab, Inc.</a></p>
</div>

</body>
</html>