Validation within models in CodeIgniter?

Last updated on January 17, 2018

In general, we write all validation rules in Controllers, This is perfectly fine, but can lead to a large amount of validation code within your controllers.Let’s have a look at how we can shift some of the validation logic into our models instead.

First Create Our Model

class Test_model extends CI_Model {

public $rules = array(
		'name' => array(
			'field' => 'name', 
			'label' => 'Name', 
			'rules' => 'trim|required|xss_clean'
		),
		'message' => array(
			'field' => 'message', 
			'label' => 'Message', 
			'rules' => 'trim|required|xss_clean'
		),
	);

}

Now Create a Controller : controller/test.php.
I am writing inline comments in the code, just go through it and let me know if you have confusion or further improvement in coding or tutorial.

class Test extends CI_Controller {
   public function index() {
      // load the model to get rules property 
      $this->load->model('test_model');
	
     // get rules array from the model
     $rules = $this->test_model->rules;
    // set validation rules	
     $this->form_validation->set_rules($rules);	
     // Process the form
      if ($this->form_validation->run() == TRUE) {
         // do something 
      } else {
        // do something
      } 		
   }
}