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This tutorial series explain how to develop a web based application using CodeIgniter, the PHP application framework. As you might already know, CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications.

In this tutorial, we took the case of developing a basic web based accounting application that can input cash book and bank book data transaction and journal entry.

The tutorial series will cover:

• Part 1 Setting Up the Environment: XAMPP (apache, mysql, and PHP) and CodeIgniter
• Part 2 The application specification, analysis and design using UML use case and class diagram using free UML diagram tool StarUML.. (download here if you have not install it in your computer) . We also need to install StarUML PHP 5 Code Generator Template to automatically generate the class files from class diagram created
• Part 3 ER Diagram and Creating Database using MySQL workbench, formerly fabForce ERD tools for MySQL
• Part 4, preparing to code in CodeIgniter, exporting class diagram to PHP scripts
• Part 5 Coding, the Cashbook Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
• Part 6 Coding, the Mainpage and COA Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
• Part 7 Coding, the Bankbook Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
• Part 8 Coding, the Journal Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
• Part 9 Coding, the Reporting Module explain the application coding using CodeIgniter
• Part 10 Conslusion and Further Development: AJAX, Facebook Application

Part 1 Setting Up The Environment

Installing XAMPP

Click here for detailed instruction on how to install XAMPP. Make sure that you can access the web server installed in XAMPP by entering the URL http://localhost. If you did, a page will appear showing that the XAMPP was installed successfully. Try clicking on the phpinfo() link to make sure that PHP installation was also successful. Try also the CD Collection Demos to make sure that MySQL installed correctly. If something was not right, go back to the installation article and make sure that the server configuration was correct.

Installing CodeIgniter

Installing CodeIgniter Framework is simply easy. After you downloaded the last version package from CodeIgniter website, extract the package file to your XAMPP document root, defaulted in c:\xampp\htdocs. It’s better that you rename the folder CodeIgniter_1.7.1 to reflect our application name, for example: acct.

After extracting the file and renaming the folder to acct, your folder structure will look like this:

You could test the CodeIgniter framework now to make sure that it’s already up. Enter the URL http://localhost/acct at your browser, then you should see something like this:

Congratulation! You have done the first step of creating our web based Accounting Application. You could now continue to the next step about the application specification we are going to develop, and the design and analysis using UML diagram.

But, before continuing to the next step, I suggest you to check out the CodeIgniter User Manual which is already located on your server at http://<yourserver>/acct/user_guide.