A to the W

I was looking into doing some work with CodeIgniter but unlike CakePHP they did not have a default controller installed for pages that are just a static view. Sometimes a controller with a defined function is not always necessary and or needed to display a page to the user. Of course if you wanted you could bloat your controller class with a million functions that map to each individual view or we can have one function that maps to the view dynamically. Here is the raw code for my class in question:

/*
  Pages Controller for CI
  Anthony Wlodarski
  ant92083 at gmail dot com
  http://www.anthonyw.net
  2/16/2010

  This class requires custom configuration of CI for static pages to be
  rendered and displayed correctly.

  1.) routes.php must be configured to contain the line:
  	$route['pages/:any'] = "pages";

  2.) All static php files for views must be contained in a sub folder of views called "pages".
  3.) index.php must be implemented in the "pages" subfolder.
  4.) All views must have a *.php extension.
*/

class Pages extends Controller{
	private $views;
	// constructor
	function Pages() 
	{
		parent::Controller();
		// build a an array of views
		$this->load->helper('file');
		$this->views = get_filenames(getcwd() . '/system/application/views/pages/');
	}

	function index()
	{
		// get the second segment of the url
		$view = $this->uri->segment(2);
		// special case if $view == false then we have come to a special case of the index page needing to be displayed
		if(!$view)
		{
			$view = 'pages/index';
			$this->load->view($view);
			return 0;
		}

		if(in_array($view.'.php', $this->views))
		{
			// move onto loading this view or then pass a 404
			$this->load->view('pages/'.$view);
		}
		else
		{
			// the view as not in the "pages" folder and cannot be displayed
			show_404();
		}
	}
}