Chapter 4. Using CI to Simplify Databases

You're looking at CI because you want to make coding easier and more productive. This chapter is about CI's Active Record class. If CI offered nothing more than its Active Record class, it would still be worth every penny of the purchase price. All right, it's free! Let's rephrase that—it would still be a major tool to increase your productivity.

Active Record allows you to handle databases with a minimum of fuss and maximum of clarity. It's simple to use and maintain.

This chapter looks at how you set up a database to work with CI, and then how you use the Active Record class to manipulate the database. You'll see:

CI allows you to write queries in the traditional "classic" PHP style as well, but let's not get into details of that. It's fully covered in the online user guide. Jose started off by doing it the traditional way, but once he tried Active Record, he never looked back.