Using Ajax to submit form data has become one of the important and modern way of development. In this tutorial you will learn how to send form data using Ajax and Code Igniter (MVC Framework)

I want you to know that this tutorial for beginners only now for experts. You need to follow few steps to post form values.

1-      You need to download JQuery from JQuery Website.

2-      Include your JQuery file in header of your View File.

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<script src=”Your_Project/JSDirectory/jquery-1.10.1.min.js”></script>

3-      Now paste following code anywhere in your HTML code.

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$(function(){

$("#add_user").submit(function(){

dataString = $("#add_user").serialize();

$.ajax({

type: "POST",

url: "<?php echo base_url(); ?>users/Add_User",

data: dataString,

success: function(data){

alert('Successful!');

}

});

return false;  //stop the actual form post

});

});

4-      Here is the form code that will send values:

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<form id="add_user" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">

<label>Name: </label>

<input type="text" name="name" />

<br />

<label>Comment: </label>

<input type="password" name="password" />

<br />

<label>&nbsp;</label>

<input type="submit" value="Submit" />

</form>

5-      Now create a Controller that will action with the passed values.

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<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class Users extends CI_Controller {

function __construct()

{

parent::__construct();

}

function Add_User()

{

if($_POST)

{

//Operate your POST values

}

}

}

?>

This is all hope you will like this, and if you like this, don’t forget to comment and subscribe

Posting form data using Ajax in CodeIgniter

I am DZone Contributor from last year and it made me happy that all my struggle bring me something. This is appreciation from DZone. Today when i get back from my office, i just found DZone Goody Package waiting for me at my home. DZone sent me T-Shirt, A USB stick from Tizen, a discount card from Minning Publications and many other things. I even got my own chance to get an iPad from DZone.

DZone Goody Package Arrives

CodeIgniter Email Class built for handling double-byte characters is really bad, cannot be properly set up Charest UTF-8.

Here I want to share my information to use Codeigniter and PHPmailer together. In this way you can send any type of codes in Email Body.  We have to follow few steps to use PHPmailer with CodeIgniter.

1-      Download PHPmailer from original site.

2-      Extract the downloaded “Zip” file.

3-      Open the extracted file and copy “phpmailer.php” and “class.smtp.php”.

4-      Paste these Two Files in Codeigniter Libraries.

5-      Now create now controller as I have following one.

CIPHP.php

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if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

class CIPHP extends CI_Controller {

function __construct(){

parent::__construct();

$this->load->library('phpmailer');

}

function send_email() {

$subject               =             'Test Email';

$name                  =             'Engr Mudasir';

$email                   =             'mudasir@computersneaker.com';

$body                   =             "This si body text for test email to combine CodeIgniter and PHPmailer";

$this->phpmailer->AddAddress($email);

$this->phpmailer->IsMail();

$this->phpmailer->From     = 'info@computersneaker.com';

$this->phpmailer->FromName = 'Computer Sneaker';

$this->phpmailer->IsHTML(true);

$this->phpmailer->Subject  =  $subject;

$this->phpmailer->Body     =  $body;

$this->phpmailer->Send();

}

}

You simply need to pass values to this function and email is sent.

To Read Simple PHPMailer to send email using PHP.

Your controller is ready to send email using PHPMailer. This was simple, If you want to modify this controller, e.g you want to send html pages, you will kindly let me know, I will write another tutorial regarding this.

Send Email Using PHPMailer and Codeigniter

Functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast to the imperative programming style, which emphasizes changes in state. Functional programming has its roots in lambda calculus, a formal system developed in the 1930s to investigate computability, the Noninterchangeable, function definition, function application, and recursion. Many functional programming languages can be viewed as elaborations on the lambda calculus.

PHP has the following characteristics that make it support functional programming. They include:

Anonymous OR  lambda functions:

They are functions that use internal closure class during their implementation. In latest version of PHP they use the invoke() function. In PHP 5.4.x an anonymous function can be defined inside a class but to access the properties and methods of that class it uses variables like “$this”. Mainly they are classes that do not have a name. The values that are seen by anonymous functions are those that were bound during function definition.

Closures

By meaning a closure is similar to an anonymous function but the difference is that a closure encloses some parts of its surroundings (external scope). Since PHP uses early binding by default the values at the external scope can be seen by implementing late binding. This is done by passing by reference the variables outside the scope which is implemented applying the keyword use.

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$variable = 10;
// Create a closure using a variable outside of the scope of the anonymous function.
$closure = function($arg) use ($variable)
{
Return $arg + $variable;
};

Partial functions and currying

Partial function is consequent from a general function that takes many variables. In that a partial function has the capacity of fixing most of the variables in a general function.

NOTE: Curry is not a PHP function, but it can be created.

It can be implemented using closures as follows

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$general_function = function($a, $b){

Return $a * $a - $b * $b;

};

$partial_function = function ($a) use ($general_function) {

Return $general_function ($a, 5);

};

//Currying is a technique whereby a function that takes one argument can be created from a function that takes multiple arguments. Example:

$add2 = curry($add, 2); //returns a new function reference, to add(), bound with 2 as the first argument

$add2 (8); // return 10

 

Higher order functions

Higher order functions are functions that a able of accepting functions as their input parameters. The input function’s parameters must accept the same number of parameters and the output function takes the same number of parameters. Higher order functions are implemented by closures and lambdas.

Pure functions, immutable data

It is not effortless to apply this in PHP but to make it feasible one has to avoid state and mutable data.PHP implements pure functions by using variables such as global or static but these variables do not change the inputs and outputs.PHP also implements immutable (unchallengeable) data by defining its variables as constants.

Recursion

It is a procedure in programming whereby the output of a problem relies on the outputs of other smaller problems but the smaller problems must be from the same problem. Recursion is used to maintain the state and avoid data mutation. Recursion is not implemented in a structured way rather by function calls.

How to Write Functional Code in PHP

In our today’s tutorial we will learn about codeigniter installation on our local server or web host.

So we need to follow the following steps:

1. =>Download Current version of Codeigniter.
2. =>Unzip Codeigniter folder and then copy in your server root folder e.g C://wamp/htdocs/

1. =>Now simply rename the folder “e.g myWebsite”
2. =>Here comes the actual phase to config items. Open myWebsite/application/config/config.php
3. =>Change base_url at line 17

1. =>Now open your browser and follow the URL: http://localhost/myWebsite/

Now if it gives welcome message then It means installation was successful else you had missed something and you need to follow the steps again.

CodeIgniter Installation

I am today going to provide Ajax sorting in PHP. I will use a “users”  MySQL table for my tutorial. I will divide my tutorial in few steps so that I can let you understand Sorting using AJAX easily.

My very first step is to create a table in MySQL, you can copy this query and execute this in SQL section of your tool.

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CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `users` (

`id` int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,

`saluation` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`firstname` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`surname` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`password` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`address` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`address2` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`city` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`zip` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`country` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`phone` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`mobile` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`email` varchar(250) DEFAULT NULL,

`status` varchar(250) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'inactive',

`start_date` timestamp NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,

`expiry_date` datetime DEFAULT NULL,

`last_login` datetime DEFAULT NULL,

`last_logout` datetime DEFAULT NULL,

`flag` varchar(50) DEFAULT 'ofline',

PRIMARY KEY (`id`)

)

Demo                                                                  Download Code

Now we have table “users”, insert some dummy values in this table. So that we can have some data to see the demo.

Second step is to build connection between your PHP files and MySQL server.

You need to create a file named as “config.php” and then copy and paste this code in that file.

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$servername='localhost';

$dbusername='root';

$dbpassword='';

$dbname='swissmetrics';

$link=mysql_connect ("$servername","$dbusername","$dbpassword");

mysql_select_db("$dbname",$link) or die ("could not open db".MySQL_error());

if you want to understand this connection establishment deeply then read my article “Connection between MySQL and PHP”

Third step is to create a file “main.php”

And then create a form in that file, just copy and paste this code in main.php

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<form name="ajaxlearning" id="ajaxlearning">

Sort By:<select name="dropdown" id="dropdown" onchange="dynamic_Select(this.value)">

<option value="">Select Filter</option>

<option value="saluation">Saluation</option>

<option value="surname">Surname</option>

<option value="firstname">First Name</option>

</select>

</form>

You have observed that there is onchange function called in select of the form. This function is also part of this “main.php” File. This function will call ajax method to call the records from another file.

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<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script>

<script>

function dynamic_Select(dropdown) {

$.ajax({

type: "GET",

url: 'values.php',

data: "ch=" + dropdown,

dataType: "html",

success: function(html){$("#txtResult").html(html); $("#firstresult").css("display", "none");}

});

}

</script>

This will get value of your selected option and then pass that value to the file “values.php”, this file will call the values accordingly. And then display those values on your page without refreshing your page.

Here is the code for “values.php”:

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<?php

include('config.php');

$order  =             $_GET['ch'];

if($order!='')

{

$query  =             "SELECT * FROM users Order By $order ASC";

}

else

{

$query  =             "SELECT * FROM users";

}

$res       =             mysql_query($query);

?>

<table id="mytable" cellspacing="0" summary="Sorting MySQL Data Using PHP and Ajax">

<caption>Sorting MySQL Data Using PHP and Ajax</caption>

<tr>

<th scope="col">Saluation</th>

<th scope="col">Surname</th>

<th scope="col">FirstName</th>

</tr>

<?php

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($res))

{

echo '<tr>

<td>'.$row['saluation'].'</td>

<td>'.$row['surname'].'</td>

<td>'.$row['firstname'].'</td>

</tr>';

}

?>

</table>

Demo                                                                  Download Code

I hope you will like my tutorial. Please don’t forget to comment and subscribe my blog.

Sorting mysql data using PHP and AJAX

Export mysql as csv is mostly needed when you need to import data to some other database, wherever you wanted to use.

I am giving my today’s release in that case, this is complete tested code to export MySQL as csv, whatever you need is to change the query section of this code.

I hope it would full fill all your requirements, it it does then do’t forget to comment.

Here it goes!

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/*

* establish database connection
*/

$conn = mysql_connect('server_name', 'server_username', 'your_password') or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db('Database_name', $conn) or die(mysql_error($conn));

$query = 'SELECT * FROM users';

$result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die(mysql_error($conn));

/*
* send response headers to the browser
* following headers instruct the browser to treat the data as a csv file called export.csv
*/

header('Content-Type: text/csv');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment;filename=export.csv');

$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
if ($row)
{
getcsv(array_keys($row));
}

 

while ($row)
{
getcsv($row);
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
}

/*
* echo the input array as csv data maintaining consistency with most CSV implementations
*/

function getcsv($fields)
{
$separator = '';
foreach ($fields as $field)
{
if (preg_match('/\\r|\\n|,|"/', $field))
{
$field = '"' . str_replace('"', '""', $field) . '"';
}
echo $separator . $field;
$separator = ',';
}
echo "\r\n";
}

Export MySQL As CSV

Money is in the list of every single person in the world.

All of us know this. That’s why you should care about increasing your subscribers if you are running a blog.

A lot of blogs shows to you the most common places to add your subscription box, but I thought why don’t we share the rarely used places and that can bring us more subscribers.

So, usual places + unusual places = more subscribers and most importantly more money.

If you are actually looking for places to increase your subscribers, you are on the right place.

Let’s start with an additional benefit and show you the most common places:

1- On the sidebar “but at the top”:

so that new visitors will check it after they enter your site.

2- After the post:

If a reader read all the post to the end then he may like your stuff and he may want to get further updates, so this is the place to ask them to subscribe.

3- Popup Box:

I think that no one these days doesn’t use these boxes, It attracts attention of your first time visitors + you have a lot of space to show them the features of signing up to your blog.

But now what are the 5 Unusual But Important Places to Add Subscription Box? Let’s see them:

4- Feature Box:

Feature Box is the box that is at the top of your blog after the header directly. It attracts attention, and you have a big place to share with your reader what will they get from subscribing.

Many had started to use it, but also not that much. That’s why it isn’t common. I encourage you to try it.

5- About pages:

Yes, about pages, but there is a big question mark that how this page helps you to get more subscribers?

If a new reader came across your blog, he may go to your about page to know more about your site. If they did not like it, then no problem. But what if they liked it, will you let them to go away without subscribing your blog?

If they liked it, this mean they can be your super readers, so don’t leave them go without any action.

6- Other landing pages:

If you have content landing pages, or what Brian Clark call cornerstone content, then you must add your subscription box there too.

It maybe any other pages “not only cornerstone content”, it maybe your page that you shows in it your income every month, like this one by Pat Flynn “Income Reports“.

You show people that you want business, and that you create content that they like, so ask them to subscribe.

7- Top Bar:

I think you may have heard about HelloBar.

Yes, that bar that appears at the top of your blog.

There is no well place than this to ask your readers to subscribe. Forward them to a page which shows them what will they get and then ask them to subscribe.

The best thing about it is that it can be scrolling all the way down with the reader, so if you reader liked your content, then he will click on it.

8- Footer of your site:

The footer, why?

If someone scrolled all the way down then he might be interested to subscribe.

Conclusion:

These were some of the places to add your subscription box and increase subscribers. Some of them may seem common, but maximum of the blogs don’t use it.

I don’t use them all and I don’t encourage you to do so, but try them and test the one that increases your subscribers.

Now, its your turn to tell us about any other place we may have missed, also tell us about the places that you are using  plus the places you will try to use.

8 Important Places to Add Subscription Box

I am happy to write about PHPMailer class, let’s learn that how to send and email using PHPMailer. In this tutorial we will talk about how to use HTML Templates as an email, attatch files with your email using PHPMailer. Here we will use the following files to as sample for newbies.

• index.php
• send_email.php
• contents.html
• images/logo1.png
• images/engr_mudasir.jpg

Our index file contains a form that will ask for an email address and on submit it will send an email to your email address you entered. In any other constraint you could say that it is front end page.

Demo                                                                  Download Code

index.php

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<html>
<head>
<title>Send and Email Using PHPMaier</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Send an Email Using PHPMailer Demo</h2>
<form enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post" action="send_mail.php">
<table width="461" height="138" border="1">
<tr>
<td width="141">Enter Your Email Here</td>
<td width="187">
<input name="email" id="email" type="text" />
<input type="submit" name="btnsend" id="btnsend" value="Send Email" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="">Main Tutorial Here</a></td>
<td><a href="http://www.engrmudasir.computersneaker.com">By Engr Mudasir</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Our second file contains contents to send to the user as email body, this contains an image too.

contents.html

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<body style="margin: 10px;">
<div style="width: 640px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">
<div align="center"><img src="images/logo1.png" style="height: 90px; width: 340p"></div><br>
<br>
&nbsp;This is a Demo of PHPMailer.<br>
<br>
This particular example uses <strong>HTML</strong>, with a &lt;div&gt; tag and inline<br>
styles.<br>
<br>
Also note the use of the PHPMailer logo above with no specific code to handle
including it.<br />
Included are two attachments:<br />
logo1.png is an attachment and used inline as a graphic (above)<br />
engr_mudasir.jpg is an attachment<br />
<br />
</div>
</body>

Third file is action for the above form, this action file will send an email to the email address entered in the form.

Include the PHPMailer class and create an object for the PHPMailer class. Object will call the functions from the PHPMailer class. Defined are the characteristics to be used and keep in focus to send email.

send_email.php

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require_once('class.phpmailer.php');
if(isset($_POST['btnsend']))
{
$mail = new PHPMailer(); // defaults to using php "mail()"

$body = file_get_contents('contents.html');

$mail->SetFrom('engrmudasirmalik@gmail.com', 'ComputerSneaker.com');

$address = $_POST['email'];
$mail->AddAddress($address, "Guest");

$mail->Subject = "PHPMailer Demo Test From ComputerSneaker";

$mail->AltBody = "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!"; // optional

$mail->MsgHTML($body);

$mail->AddAttachment("images/logo1.png"); // attachment
$mail->AddAttachment("images/engr mudasir.jpg"); // attachment

if(!$mail->Send()) {
echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
} else {
echo "A test email sent to your email address '".$_POST['email']."' Please Check Email and Spam too.";
echo '<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=http://www.computersneaker.com/send-email-using-phpmailer/">';
}
}

Demo                                                                  Download Code

And here comes the email as Email Body :

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, don’t forget to provide feedback and subscribe for our blog.

Send Email Using PHPMailer

Blogging is a very pretty source since it gives you an chance to share your voice and views on any topic. It is also becoming more and more popular by every passing day. Many people want to start blogging but they are not sure of how to start with it. What to do, how to do and things like that. If you want to start blogging, I would suggest you to start with a wordpress.com blog. You can start with a blog in no cost at wordpress.com and it provides all that you need to start blogging. There are certain restrictions of having a blog at wordpress.com like you don’t have all the controls, you can’t display ads etc. and that’s why people who are professional bloggers go for self hosted blogs but if you are beginner then a wordpress.com blog will be more than enough for you.
What? Don’t know how to start with a wordpress.com blog? No problem, WordPress is here to help you.

WordPress announced the launch of Learn WordPress , A step-by-step tutorial that includes lessons on how to start a blog, customize your site, and connect with other bloggers in the WordPress.com community. It’s a great resource for anyone who:

•  Wants to create a blog but isn’t quite sure where to start
•  Needs help choosing a blog topic
•  Wants to better understand how blogging works
•  Is interested in attracting more blog visitors

It is a very well-organized book kind of guide which you can go through to learn blogging and WordPress.

Learn Blogging Right Now