Codeigniter form populate with db results not working

Question

I have been trying for days now using the form class to populate the text fields from my database. I have also been searching to find out how to do it without any luck.

Please could somebody take a look at my code and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Model

    //This function brings up the selected users information for editing.
public function edit_user($id)
{
    $this->db->select('id, email, name, lastname, homeaddress, posteladdress, 
    mobile, hometel, idnum');
    $this->db->where('id', $id)->limit(1);
    $query = $this->db->get('user');
    return $query->result();

}

Controller

public function get_user_edit($id)
{
    $this->load->helper('form');
    $this->load->model('model_users'); //Load the user model

    //Get the database results from the model

    $data['results'] = $this->model_users->edit_user($id);
    foreach ($data['results'] as $key => $row)
    {
        $data['results'] = array(   'id' => $row->id,
                        'email' => $row->email,
                        'name' => $row->name, 
                        'lastname' => $row->lastname,
                        'homeaddress' => $row->homeaddress,
                        'posteladdress' => $row->posteladdress,
                        'mobile' => $row->mobile,
                        'hometel' => $row->hometel,
                        'idnum' => $row->idnum);

    }
    $this->load->view('edit_user', $data);
}

View

<div id="body">
        <p>Edit user information.</p>

    <?php 


    echo form_open('user_admin/user_update', $results);

    echo validation_errors();

    echo "<p><lable>Email:</lable>";
    echo form_input('email', set_value('email'));
    echo "</p>";


    echo "<p><lable>Name:</lable>";
    echo form_input('name', set_value('name'));
    echo "</p>";

    echo "<p>";
    echo form_submit('edit_submit', 'Update');
    echo "</p>";

    echo form_close();

    ?> 

I keep getting this error

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: 4096

Message: Object of class stdClass could not be converted to string

Filename: helpers/form_helper.php

Line Number: 1010

Answer 1

First thing. You're expecting a single row to be returned from the database, right? But you're looping through the result in your controller. Instead of doing that in your model:

return $query->result();

do this:

return $query->row();

and remove the foreach loop from your controller (it even has an unused $key var in there). You'll end up having cleaner and shorter code. Only if you're getting a single row, which seems to be the case.

Moving on.

Have you read the documentation here: https://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/helpers/form_helper.html ?

form_open('user_admin/user_update', $results); - what are you trying to do here?

You use the second parameter to pass attributes to the opening tag. Now looking at your code, your $results array has values for each field. Doesn't make much sense to push all this into the form opening tag, does it?

Field rendering with the correct values.

This is an example from the documentation how to configure and render an input field:

$data = array(
              'name'        => 'username',
              'id'          => 'username',
              'value'       => 'johndoe',
              'maxlength'   => '100',
              'size'        => '50',
              'style'       => 'width:50%',
            );

echo form_input($data);

So, your email input should be formatted having the minimal config like that:

$data = array(
              'name'        => 'email',
              'value'       => $results['email']
            );

echo form_input('email', $data);

On validation (in your user_update() method in user_admin controller), you'll have to do some logic to capture the value you're validating. So you'll need something like:

$results['email'] = set_value('email');

Hope that makes sense!