CodeIgniter: Displaying Form Issue - php

Question

After following the CodeIgniter's excellent documentation I have a very simple news article system setup which allows anyone to post an article if they go to news/create. I am now trying to implement a simple log in solution which will only allow logged in users to post articles, I have followed this tutorial (http://www.iluv2code.com/login-with-codeigniter-php.html) and have it working as it shown in the tutorial however the issues arise when instead of getting the user to land on the private page once they have logged in I want them to land on news/create.
My attempts to get this working have allowed me to get the user to land on the page but the page then fails to render properly leaving the article submission form not existent. Here is the code which I believe is causing the issue (mainly the 'Create' function):
<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
session_start();
class News extends CI_Controller {
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
$this->load->model('news_model');
}
public function index()
{
$data['news'] = $this->news_model->get_news();
$data['title'] = 'News archive';
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('news/index', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/footer');
}
public function view($slug)
{
$data['news_item'] = $this->news_model->get_news($slug);
if (empty($data['news_item']))
{
show_404();
}
$data['title'] = $data['news_item']['title'];
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('news/view', $data);
$this->load->view('templates/footer');
}
public function create()
{
if($this->session->userdata('logged_in'))
{
$session_data = $this->session->userdata('logged_in');
$data1['username'] = $session_data['username'];
$this->load->view('news/create', $data1);
$this->load->helper('form');
$this->load->library('form_validation');
$data['title'] = 'Create a news item';
$this->form_validation->set_rules('title', 'Title', 'required');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('text', 'text', 'required');
if ($this->form_validation->run() === FALSE)
{
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('news/create');
$this->load->view('templates/footer');
}
else
{
$this->news_model->set_news();
$this->load->view('templates/header', $data);
$this->load->view('news/success');
$this->load->view('templates/footer');
}
}
else
{
//If no session, redirect to login page
redirect('login', 'refresh');
}
}
public function logout()
{
$this->session->unset_userdata('logged_in');
session_destroy();
redirect('news', 'refresh');
}
}
For those whose comments asking about the session, there is a separate controller creating that session (as seen below). This is functioning fine though as on the 'private page' which only logged in users can access it currently displays the username however it fails to render any of the create function after the initial 'is the user logged in or not'.
<?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
class VerifyLogin extends CI_Controller {
function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
$this->load->model('user','',TRUE);
}
function index()
{
//This method will have the credentials validation
$this->load->library('form_validation');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('username', 'Username', 'trim|required|xss_clean');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', 'Password', 'trim|required|xss_clean|callback_check_database');
if($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE)
{
//Field validation failed. User redirected to login page
$this->load->view('login_view');
}
else
{
//Go to private area
redirect('news/create', 'refresh');
}
}
function check_database($password)
{
//Field validation succeeded. Validate against database
$username = $this->input->post('username');
//query the database
$result = $this->user->login($username, $password);
if($result)
{
$sess_array = array();
foreach($result as $row)
{
$sess_array = array(
'id' => $row->id,
'username' => $row->username
);
$this->session->set_userdata('logged_in', $sess_array);
}
return TRUE;
}
else
{
$this->form_validation->set_message('check_database', 'Invalid username or password');
return false;
}
}
}
?>
Any guidance or help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

After sometime of going through this code I finally arrived at the issue and will post the solution here incase anyone else comes across a similar problem and they can use this as reference.
I was trying to load a view in the initial check to see whether a user was logged on, deleting this line allowed the rest of the solution function as it should.
public function create()
{
if($this->session->userdata('logged_in'))
{
$session_data = $this->session->userdata('logged_in');
$data1['username'] = $session_data['username'];
$this->load->view('news/create', $data1); ----- LINE IN QUESTION
$this->load->helper('form');
$this->load->library('form_validation');
$data['title'] = 'Create a news item';
$this->form_validation->set_rules('title', 'Title', 'required');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('text', 'text', 'required');