Helper Data

Name	Path
Data Helper	/application/helpers/data_helper.php

These methods help manipulate data (typically strings) for use in the application.

Load the helper

$this->load->helper('data_helper');

Methods

decodeValue

Will decode a previously encoded string.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$str	string	N/A	Yes	The string to decode

Example

$string = decodeValue($string);

---

findPage

Inspects the URL and looks at the last segment to extract a possible page number from.

Example

// URL /marks/today/5
$page = findPage();

// $page = 5

// URL /marks/2014
$page = findPage();

// $page = 1

---

findStartFinish

Attempts to find the timestamp to use for start and finish date lookups.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$start	string	N/A	Yes	The date or timeframe to find the start date from.
$finish	string	null	No	The finish date or timeframe. If not send the function will figure it out for you.

Example

// Returns the correct timestamps
$dates = findStartFinish('4 days ago', 'today');

// Returns start as first day of the year and finish as last day of the year
$dates = findStartFinish(2013);

---

formatErrors

Returns an array of formatted errors.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$errors	Mixed	N/A	Yes	Either an array of errors or an error number.

Example

// Return array with key of 100 and message of Security token is invalid.
$errors = formatErrors(100);

// Returns array as it was sent
$errors = formatErrors(array(102 => array('email' => 'Email address is invalid')));

---

generateSlug

Takes a string and returns a valid slug to be used for lookups and within a url.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$str	String	N/A	Yes	The string to used to create a slug.

Example

// Return my-slug
$errors = formatErrors('My Slug!');

---

generateTimeSpan

Used to return a nice time when an item was created. Instead of showing the exact datetime of an item it will return something like '10 days ago'.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$date	Mixed	N/A	Yes	A string of a date, data or datetime.

Example

// Returns 1 day ago (assuming today is 2014-01-30)
$nice_time = generateTimeSpan('2014-01-29');

---

getLastJsonError

Will simply return the last JSON error if any after parsing a JSON document. If no error it will return false.

Example

$json = json_decode($file);
$json_error = getLastJsonError();

if ($json_error === false) {
    // do something
}
else {
    // Log exception
}

---

getSmartLabelInfo

Pass a URL to this function and it will return an array giving you the domain, path and key (md5 hash of domain).

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$url	String	N/A	Yes	The URL to extract information from.

Example

// Returns array of domain: nilai.co, path: , key: ea494e43dd071dc289fbe07c5d05f574
$smart_info = getSmartLabelInfo('http://nilail.co');

// Returns array of domain: nilai.co, path: /marks, key: ea494e43dd071dc289fbe07c5d05f574
$smart_info = getSmartLabelInfo('nilail.co/marks');

// Returns array of domain: nilai.co, path: /search, key: ea494e43dd071dc289fbe07c5d05f574
$smart_info = getSmartLabelInfo('http://www.nilail.co/search');

---

getTagsFromHash

Returns the words attached to hashmarks in a string.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$str	String	N/A	Yes	The string to extract tags from.

Example

// Returns array of 0: hash, 1: tag, 2: jeff
$tags = getSmartLabelInfo('This is my string. #hash #tag #jeff');

---

purifyHTML

Removes any unwanted tags from the string, replaces new lines with breaks and decodes the string if already encoded.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$str	string	N/A	Yes	The string to purify

Example

$string = purifyHTML($string);

---

readEasy

Takes a string, replaces and underscores or dashes with spaces and captilized each word.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$str	string	N/A	Yes	The string to ready

Example

// Returns About Us
$string = readEasy('about_us');

---

readyDomain

Purifies a domain name before getting put into the DB. Basically strips the protocol off.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$domain	string	N/A	Yes	The domain to ready

Example

// Returns www.google.com
$string = readyDomain('http://www.google.com');

---

standardizePath

Takes a string and makes sure it starts with a slash and does NOT end with a slash.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$url	string	N/A	Yes	The url to update

Example

// Returns /test/about-us
$string = readyDomain('test/about-us/');

---

stripTags

Sort of like PHP's strip_tags method except it works in reverse. You specify the tags to remove not keep.

Arguments

Variable	Type	Default	Required	Description
$str	string	N/A	Yes	The string to strip tags from.
$tags	array	N/A	Yes	An array of tags to strip from the submitted string.

Example

$string = stripTags($string, array('font','iframe','script'));

---