How to Install CodeIgniter in CentOS 7

CodeIgniter is a powerful development framework written in PHP and is widely used by developers who build fully featured web applications.

CodeIgniter has few requirements to run:

• Web server. For the purpose of this tutorial we are going to use Apache.
• PHP 5.6 or newer
• Database server such as MySQL 5.1 (or newer). PostgreSQL, MS SQL,SQLite etc. For the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to use MariaDB.
• Composer

Note: This tutorial assumes you already have a LAMP stack installed. If you don’t have it configured yet, please check our guide: How to Install LAMP Stack on CentOS 7.

Disable SELINUX

Before we proceed, there are few more changes that need to be done. Disable SELinux by editing:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux

And set SELinux to disabled:

SELINUX=disabled

Create MySQL Database for CodeIgniter

Next we will create database and database user for our CodeIgniter installation. To do this, start the MySQL server and enter the following:

MariaDB> create database code_db;
MariaDB> grant all privileges on codedb.* to code_db@'localhost' identified by 'password';
MariaDB> flush privileges;
MariaDB> exit

This will create database named code_db and user code_db identified by password “password”.

Install Composer Package Manager

If you wish to install CodeIgniter dependencies, you will need composer. It is easy to install with the following commands:

# curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
# mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer

Install CodeIgniter Framework

Now we are ready to proceed with the CodeIgniter installation. First go to the web root directory of your server.

# cd /var/www/html/

Then we are going to use git to clone CodeIgniter from its git repository

# git clone https://github.com/bcit-ci/CodeIgniter.git  .

Next we will install the required dependencies running composer:

# composer install

Now we will update the ownership of the files to user apache:

# chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/

Configure CodeIgniter Base URL

Now, we will configure the Base URL, by editing the following file:

# vi /var/www/html/application/config/config.php

Change the following line:

$config['base_url'] = '';

And within the quotes add the URL which you will use to access the application. For me this would be http://192.168.20.148.

$config['base_url'] = 'http://192.168.20.148';

Configure CodeIgniter Database Connection

To configure the database settings for your CodeIgniter, edit the following file with your favorite text editor:

# vi /var/www/html/application/config/database.php

Find the following section:

$db['default'] = array(
        'dsn'   => '',
        'hostname' => 'localhost',
        'username' => '',
        'password' => '',
        'database' => '',
        'dbdriver' => 'mysqli',

Change to:

$db['default'] = array(
        'dsn'   => '',
        'hostname' => 'localhost',
        'username' => 'code_db',
        'password' => 'password',
        'database' => 'code_db',
        'dbdriver' => 'mysqli',

Save the file. Now you are ready to load a web browser to verify that CodeIgniter is working. Just enter the Base URL you have used earlier into your browser’s address bar:

http://192.168.20.148

Even though you have completed the installation of CodeIgniter, there is much more that can be done from this point. If you are new to the framework, you can check CodeIgniter’s documentation to get more familiar with it and make most of it.