How to download and Install CodeIgniter 4 for XAMPP server

Composer Installation

Installing CodeIgniter 4 using composer is very easy and also it is a preferred way to install CodeIgniter 4. If you do not have composer you need to install it first. Composer is a tool that can manage the libraries you need to install/update for PHP. You can download composer from https://getcomposer.org. It is quick and easy. Once composer is installed, go to command prompt and type composer. If it is installed successfully, it will show options and commands available for composer as below.

Now, go to the desired folder where you want to install CodeIgniter 4 for the project. For us, we created a folder named "projects" in D: drive. We will run below command from D:/projects in command prompt.

composer create-project codeigniter4/appstarter ci4-test

So, D:/projects/ci4-test will be the root directory for the project. When installation is complete, a folder named ci4-test will be created under D:/projects and CodeIgniter 4 will be installed with a skeleton application.

Manual Installation

If you do not want to install using composer, you can download the latest version of CodeIgniter 4 and extract it to your project root folder. You can download it from https://codeigniter.com/download. Select CodeIgniter 4 and download. It is a zip file; extract it to make it project root folder.

Basic Configuration and Testing

Before we test it, let us do some basic setup or verify few things. These setups are necessary irrespective of composer or manual installation.

1. Make sure 'intl' and 'mbstring' extensions are installed. Please check CodeIgniter user guide about server requirements.
2. Open php.ini (xampp/php/php.ini) in notepad and find the lines with extension=curl, extension=intl, extension=mbstring, all these lines should be uncommented to enable these extensions.
3. Open the file App.php from app/Config folder and update baseURL as http://localhost:8080/ and make index page as blank.

   
   public $baseURL = 'http://localhost:8080/';
   //
   public $indexPage = '';
   

4. We need to update the environment as development. Copy env file located in project root to .env. Open .env file and update "production" to "development" in the line "# CI_ENVIRONMENT = production". Remove # from the beginning of the line. See below:

   
   # CI_ENVIRONMENT = production
   CI_ENVIRONMENT = development
   

Test using PHP Local Web Server

You can use PHP built-in web server as local Development Server and test your application. Go to command prompt and type in below command from your project root.

php spark serve

After you enter the above command, local server will be started in port 8080.

Run http:// localhost:8080 in the browser and you should see the below screen. If you see this, your installation is complete.

Test For Database Connection in CoddeIgniter 4

We will Connect to MySQL database in CodeIgniter 4 and display data in a view from a database table. Use below scripts to create a table and insert data in MySQL database.

CREATE TABLE `product` (
  `product_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `product_name` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
  `price` decimal(12,2) NOT NULL,
  `stock` int(11) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

INSERT INTO `product` (`product_id`, `product_name`, `price`, `stock`) VALUES
(1, 'Sofa', '10000.00', 34),
(2, 'Dining Table', '6000.00', 100),
(3, 'Dining Chair(set of 4)', '5000.00', 30),
(4, 'Mattress', '8000.00', 111);

ALTER TABLE `product`
  ADD PRIMARY KEY (`product_id`);

ALTER TABLE `product`
  MODIFY `product_id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT, AUTO_INCREMENT=5;

Update Database.php in app/Config for database name, userid and password.

Update $default as below:

public $default = [
        'DSN'      => '',
        'hostname' => 'localhost',
        'username' => 'root',
        'password' => '',
        'database' => 'demo',
        'DBDriver' => 'MySQLi',
        'DBPrefix' => '',
        'pConnect' => false,
        'DBDebug'  => (ENVIRONMENT !== 'production'),
        'charset'  => 'utf8',
        'DBCollat' => 'utf8_general_ci',
        'swapPre'  => '',
        'encrypt'  => false,
        'compress' => false,
        'strictOn' => false,
        'failover' => [],
        'port'     => 3306,
    ];

We will create a Controller, a Model and a View for our testing. Our Controller is Product.php, Model is ModelProduct.php and View is product.php.

Basically, controller calls a model method to get all products and then send the data to the view. The view displays the data in a html table.

<?php
namespace App\Controllers;
use App\Models\ModelProduct;

class Product extends BaseController {
	protected $model;
	public function __construct() {
		$this->model = new ModelProduct();
	}

	public function index() {
		$data['product_data'] = $this->model->getProducts();
		echo view('product',$data);
	}
}

<?php
namespace App\Models;
use CodeIgniter\Model;

class ModelProduct extends Model{
  protected $db;
  public function __construct() {
        parent::__construct();
        $this->db = db_connect();
    }

  function getProducts() {
    $builder = $this->db->table('product');
    $builder->orderBy('product_id');
    $query = $builder->get();
    return $query->getResult();
  }
}

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <title>Display Products</title>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.5.2/css/bootstrap.min.css">
</head>
<body>
	<div class="container">
		<h2>List of Products</h2>
		<div class="table-responsive">
			<table class="table table-bordered table-hover">
				<thead>
					<tr><th>Product Id</th><th>Product Name</th><th>Price (INR)</th><th>Stock</th>
					</tr>
				</thead>
				<?php if (!empty($product_data)) { 
					foreach ($product_data as $row) { ?>
						<tr>
							<td><?= esc($row->product_id) ?></td>
							<td><?= esc($row->product_name) ?></td>
							<td><?= esc($row->price) ?></td>
							<td><?= esc($row->stock) ?></td>
						</tr>
					<?php }
				}
				else
					echo '<td colspan = "5"> No Products Available</td><tr>'; ?>
			</table>
		</div>
	</div>
</body>
</html>   

Update default controller in app/Config/Routes.php.

$routes->setDefaultController('Product');

Also change below line to include Product controller.
$routes->get('/', 'Home::index');
To
$routes->get('/', 'Product::index');

We are all set to test for database connection now. Start PHP Local Server by using command line "php spark serve" as described before. Then, run http://localhost:8080/ in the browser. You should see below screen displaying the products in a html table: