Comments on: Codeigniter: Helpers, Plugins and Libraries

By: dlogan

dlogan — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:37:54 +0000

While you can put things many places within CodeIgniter, there is typically a “correct” place to put the code depending on what the code does and includes. The logic and differences between a library, helper, and plugin are outlined in the CodeIgniter user manual.

A helper is a collection of functions that are related, but not grouped in a class. A plugin is suppose to serve a single function, and a library is for custom classes.

One of the big thing that CodeIgniter does is provide organization and in the process a modular nature to development. While all the “rules” about where to put things can easily be broken, sticking to the layout helps insure code can be used and allows you to greater leverage the capabilities Codeigniter has to offer.

If you like, CodeIgniter will let you do data processing within a model, import a library as a helper or a helper as a library, or directly edit and modify the CodeIgniter core instead of extending it.

Doing so will have your project be disorganized, make upgrading CodeIgniter more difficult, and generally limit the ability you are able to leverage the CodeIgniter framework.

At that point you have to ask yourself, why am I using CodeIgniter? Why not just download a few classes/scripts from Hotscripts and attempt to integrate them with my project?

By: Dave Strickler

Dave Strickler — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 01:04:31 +0000

Very helpful – got it working for me quickly.

I did find a ‘feature’ in the Google API. Since it uses the URL to get data, you’re limited to about 2k characters, and thus about 400 data points. You will find varying amounts depending on the char count of your data.

This is not a limitation for the casual user, but a major problem for larger graphs.

By: tahsin

tahsin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:08:39 +0000

nice helpful post. I was searching for these difference. thnks. by the way, any one can helpful notes on php and zend php 5 certification on newdailyblog.blogspot.com

By: codeignitee

codeignitee — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:35:12 +0000

nice writeup!

By: Piccolo Principe

Piccolo Principe — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:16:16 +0000

“As I found out during the course of my CI project, Helpers, Plugins and Libraries are nothing more than glorified includes.”
In fact, the helper/plugin/library loading line can be easily replaced by a require_once. It does not require a framework integrating a one-file external library. What about a bunch of classes that comes with an autoloader?