routing of static pages in codeigniter - php

Question

I'm new to PHP and CodeIgniter, and I'm having trouble setting up the routing of static pages in my CodeIgniter app.
I have the ciblog/pages/views/about and it works.
I want to change it into ciblog/about.
I already have in the routes.php the $route['(:any)'] = 'pages/view/$1';
and it doesn't work it says in the browser:
page not found..
Please please help me I want to learn how to set up a static page....
Here is the code in the routes.php
<?php
defined('BASEPATH') OR exit('No direct script access allowed');
$route['default_controller'] = 'welcome';
$route['(:any)'] = 'pages/view/$1';
$route['404_override'] = '';
$route['translate_uri_dashes'] = FALSE;
?>
This is in my controller
<?php
class Pages extends CI_Controller{
public function views($page = 'home'){
if(!file_exists(APPPATH.'views/pages/'.$page.'.php')){
show_404();
}
$data['title'] = ucfirst($page);
$this->load->view('templates/header');
$this->load->view('pages/'.$page, $data);
$this->load->view('templates/footer');
}
}
?>
here is in the .htaccess
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$1 [L]
</IfModule>

Answer 1

It will work, If your Controller is along the lines of...
This is the simplest, bare bones option.
class Pages extends CI_Controller {
public function __construct() {
parent::__construct();
}
public function index() {
$this->load->view('welcome_message');
}
public function view($page) {
$this->load->view($page);
}
}
Where the view method accepts a parameter.
Of course you would need to check that the view file exists etc and take the appropriate action.
Update:
Now that you have shown your Controller, I can see you are referring to view in your routes BUT you Controller method is called views ( with an added s).
They have to be the same.
So the quickest way to make them the same is to change
$route['(:any)'] = 'pages/view/$1';
to ( By adding an s to views so its the same as the controller method )
$route['(:any)'] = 'pages/views/$1';
OR you can simply change the method name from views to view.
Your choice!

Answer 2

Assuming the "about" page is to be served by the view method of the pages controller,
$route['about'] = 'pages/view/about';