Manuigniter The automatic code generator for Codeigniter

From Beginning to End- Complete Look

Fig.1

Introduction

CRUD Operations

ManuIgniter really focused on the automation of CRUD operation related to the database in CodeIgniter. CRUD Stands for create, read, update and delete record in the database.

ManuIgniter

ManuIgniter is a free tool to generate CRUD code for a Codeigniter project. Fig.1 illustrates the complete working of Manuigniter code generation.

ManuIgniter automates the following

1. Create a database then configure your db credential in application/database.php

2. Load libraries and helpers in application/autoload.php that used in this CRUD operation.

After login, click on the 'Add New Database' button on the top right corner of the screen (or click on the 'Add Databases' menu on the sidebar). Then it leads to a new screen. There you have two options:-

You Have 2 Options

1. To upload created database (ie. .sql file)
2. To Create new database by providing the name. Then set table details.

If you choose option 1, you can just upload the '.sql file', then Manuigniter automatically leads you to the table settings page.

If you choose option 2, you can add database table details by clicking on the 'Create New Table' button. Then it displays a modal which contains a form that is the platform for entering table details. (Fig.2)

While creating a table, you must follow the following rules :-

1. Need Table Name and it does not contain any special characters such as *,!,@,#,$,& etc.

2. Have atleast one column which can be specified on the 'Column Name' field of the Modal.

a. You can specify the datatype of column by selecting option from the dropdown list. The different datatypes specified by Manuigniter are:- INT, VARCHAR, TEXT, float, DATE, and DATE TIME
b. If you want to allow 'null vaule' in that column, tick mark the checkbox under it.
c. If the entered column is the 'primary key' of that table, you can check the checkbox named 'is primary' near to it.
d. If you want to add more column details in that table, click on the 'Add More [+]' button and fill the details properly.

3. After entering all details related to the created table, Click the 'Save' button on the bottom of the Modal.

Fig.2

After the successful creation of table, it redirects to the created table listing page. You can edit column information on that window. and can also add new column details by clicking on the 'Add New Column +' button.

Let's start the magic

Fig.3

After uploading or creation of database, Manuigniter moves you to the most important stage just before of the code generation process.(Fig.3)

Main Sections

Section 1 : Set basic setting details related to the listing pages.
By default, the pages related to index, add and edit are created in views, and also corresponding functions are generated in the 'Controllers' and 'Models'. In Section 1, you can specify associated details of pages that you really want to generate. All options are checked by deault, if any change you need - uncheck the checked.
Can select pagination option from dropdown. There you can select CI Pagination or Bootstrap Pagination.
There is a collection of icons for sidebar menu options. Select appropriate icon as you wish.
If you need sorted listing pages, check the checkbox named 'Sorting'.

Section 2 : Label naming related to form controls.
You have an option to manually change the label. for this, you just enter the title of label (as you wish) on the text box shown in 'Section 2'. The database field name and it's datatype are shown below the textbox.

Fig.4

Section 3 : Set form controls.
An HTML form is a section of a document containing normal content, markup, special elements called controls (checkboxes, radio buttons, menus, etc.), and labels on those controls. You can set form controls to the corresponding field name in database table (in section 3 of Fig.3). Initially Textbox is set to all fields. This can be overridden by manually selecting the form control type in the rules dropdown (Shown in Fig.4).
If you choose dropdown as the form control for a particular field, then you can manually set the key and value by the help of 'edit value' button ( Fig.5 shown below).

Fig.5

Section 4 : Set form validation rules.

Rule	Description
is_unique	Returns FALSE if the form element is not unique to the table and field name in the parameter. Note: This rule requires Query Builder to be enabled in order to work.
valid_email	If the DB column name contains "email" anywhere then, the valid_email rule will be applied. for ex. user_email, email, email_address, client_email_addr will all satisfy this condition.
required	Returns FALSE if the form element is empty.

This table shows the form validation rules and it's description that are considered while auto-generating form validations using the method shown below (Fig.6)

Fig.6

You can select appropriate form validation rule from the dropdown list for every fields that you specified in the database table. The changes you made are automatically save and Manuigniter take corrective actions on it.

Section 5 : Set table association.

Following figure shows that 'how to create associations using Manuigniter'

Fig.7

What are database associations ?

Most entities are not isolated and they are related to another entity in a one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many relationship. Manuigniter helps you manage one-to-many relationships in your code.

Consider a user registration process where there are 2 entities : registration and country. The relationship betweem these two entities is one-to-one viz. one user can have the option to select country details specified in the entity 'country'.

Manuigniter list out the tables and you can select the associated entity from it. You can also set the 'option key' and 'option value' from the selected entity.

You can see a column named 'Position' before the 'is association' column. Which is used for positioning the controls in the generated UI Form.

After setting all rules and specifications you can download the generated Codeigniter Project in the form of Admin LTE or Bootstrap design.