Sessions at CodeIgniter Conference 2012 UK on Saturday 18th February

We know we should be testing our web applications, but its not always straightforward how to get end to end tests set up in CodeIgniter. I'll go through testing from the Model layer all the way through the front-end. Techniques, examples, and tips about how to keep your code tested.

Increasingly the world of technology relies on APIs to get things done, but they're often bolted on to an existing product as an afterthought and offer limited functionality so that marketing can say "and yes, we have an API". I'll be talking about why building your APIs first and using them throughout your work helps you improve code reuse, generate usable documentation, provide amazing functionality to everybody and optimise your application; as well as how CodeIgniter helped us roll out this approach at the University of Lincoln.

Adopting an app framework like CodeIgniter is like developing at double speed. The framework's conventions and pattern abstractions provide structural simplicity allowing devs to focus on high level functionality. Why should hosting be any different? A hosting framework enables developers to quickly deploy their apps onto powerful infrastructures that can be easily scaled or modified on the fly. I will be presenting a series of real world case studies comparing and contrasting traditional LAMP hosting with flexible framework hosting, sharing some clever configurations that others have used, and also reveal a little of what the future holds for hosting frameworks.

To use or not to use an ORM, that is the question. It's an ongoing debate with much pros and cons, and as many supporters as opponents. This presentation answers the questions such as "What exactly is an ORM"? "Why and when should I use it?" and "When should I not?" It explains which ORMs are available for use with CodeIgniter, the design concepts used by them and the pros and cons of each design.

In this talk Jamie Rumbelow reminisces about his time spent with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, and shows that you can get just as much craziness and magic out of CodeIgniter with some clever coding and trickery than you can with Ruby's malleable syntax. He also demonstrates some Ruby-inspired techniques that have allowed him to write more concise, cleaner and craftier code.