OOP PHP Codeigniter Controller Hierarchy - php

Question

I'm having a litle problems with my concepts of OOP. I'll try to explain the best I can.
I have this class
class Application_controller extends CI_Controller{
public function addItem(){
"some code to add the item to the database (working)";
}
}
And I have another class, both controllers:
require_once 'application_controller.php';
class Contact extends Application_controller{
public function __construct(){
parent::__construct("variables needed");
}
}
And in the View add of the contact I added the following action contact/addItem.
Ok, now here's what I know about OOP in general.
Isn't the method addItem supposed to be part of the Contact class because its extends Application_controller?
I'm asking because when I submit the form I get no action, and when I add the method addItem in the class Contact overriding the parent one it works.

Answer 1

The reason you get no action is that codeigniter doesn't find a method addItem in your Contact class (update: this is probably due to the way CodeIgniter routing works). The solution would be to make addItem a generic method in a Model that stores data in a table, move it to a Model, and load the model in your controller.
Create application/models/writeModel.php
class writeModel extends CI_Model{
function addItem(){
// code here
}
}
In your controller:
class Contact extends Controller{
function __controller(){
parent::Controller();
$this->load->model('writeModel');
}
function somefunction(){
$this->writeModel->addItem(); // call the method here
}
}
Reference: CodeIgniter Models

Answer 2

The problem here (other then the several syntax errors in the OP) is likely to be that "Contact" can not extend "Application_controller" because it does not know it exists. If we setup a test like this:
/controllers/Test.php
class Test extends CI_Controller
{
function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
}
function index()
{
echo 'test';
}
}
/controllers/TestTwo.php
require_once("Test.php");
class TestTwo extends Test
{
function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
}
function index()
{
parent::index();
echo ' and test two';
}
}
We will get the desired output of "test and test two" by navigating to appurl/TestTwo/. This is because TestTwo knows of Test. Removing the require(); line from TestTwo.php will break the relation.
Removing the index() function from TestTwo will then result in only "test" being output by navigating to appurl/TestTwo/.

Answer 3

I found an answer to some similar question on the Codeigniter forums. It says this
your ShopDownloads will inherit (methods,properties etc etc) from the Shop controller. and as said in the video tutorial, u must inherit your class from the controller class so that it can inherit all the properties and methods codeigniter provides for u.
Sohaib,
The link for the post is http://codeigniter.com/forums/viewthread/102718/#518120
I don't know how but this is working today. It was probably the server. Just needed a restart.
Its Solved, just by start the server today and start developing LOL. Thanks for youre time guys.
Regards,
Elkas