CodeIgniter behaviour, constructors and routes - php

Question

I am using CodeIgniter 2.0 for the first time to create a multilingual site where the home page contains a slide show. I am developing it on my laptop - localhost/website/.
I am using the routes.php file to specify which language function to call to set variables depending on the url with format http://localhost/website/language/page_id/some-page-title. Thus http://localhost/website/en/1/Home-Page gives the english page of page_id 1.
Routes file therefore has:
$route['default_controller'] = "content";
$route['en/(:num)/(:any)'] = "content/en/$1";
$route['de/(:num)/(:any)'] = "content/de/$1";
$route['es/(:num)/(:any)'] = "content/es/$1";
etc
An example of a language function (the en function) in the content controller is:
public function en ($page_id) {
$language="en";
$lang_array['css']="base.css";
$this->get_content($page_id, $lang_array);
}
The get_content function then does everything.
The index function of the content controller however looks like this:
public function index() {
//setting defaults for when arrive straight at home page or with no language in url
$page_id=1;
$lang_array['language']="en";
$lang_array['css']="base.css";
$this->get_content($page_id, $language);
}
My problem is that when I go to http;//localhost/website/ everything works fine including the slideshow. However, when i go to the url http://localhost/website/en/1/Home-Page everything works except the pictures in the slideshow dont appear (even though they are both executing the same code and the html output is the same when i look at view source on the page).
The only thing i could think of is the fact that if i just put http;//localhost/website/ then the index function will be called which activates the constructor, but if i put http://localhost/website/en/1/Home-Page then the index and thus constructor are bypassed. However dont know why therefore other things still work but pic slideshow doesn't. Is this the reason do you think? any solutions?
Thanks
TOm

Answer 1

What I could think is some sort of JavaScript error on an undefined variable, possible related to the $lang_array['language'] not being set.
In the index, you set the key to default to 'en',
public function index() {
//setting defaults for when arrive straight at home page or with no language in url
$page_id=1;
$lang_array['language']="en";
$lang_array['css']="base.css";
$this->get_content($page_id, $language);
}
but in the en method, you did not
public function en ($page_id) {
$language="en";
$lang_array['css']="base.css";
$this->get_content($page_id, $lang_array);
}
Since they look pretty much the same, you should abstract the identical behavior into a private function, or perhaps modify the route to send the language as a param to a single function.