Codeigniter 3.x - Preload $data to ALL views alongside dynamic data

Question

Question:

Out of curiosity, I'm wondering if Codeigniter provides a way to have specific data always loaded into a view.

For example: I have a config file that contains site information that would be beneficial to have access to inside of a view for all pages, rather than having to call to load that data every time a load a view, could I always have it included?

---

<?php
    //Standard way
    function index() {

        $this->load->config('site_settings', true);
        $data['config'] = $this->config->item('site_settings');
        $data['fizz'] = 'buzz';

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

    //Way I'd like to see
    function index() {
        $data['foo'] = 'bar';
        $this->load->view('index', $data); //$data already includes $data['config']
    }
?>

---

Option 1:

Some kind of MY_Loader Extension - We already have a MY_Controller, so it wouldn't be too far fetched to do a MY_Loader Class and have MY_Controller call that instead of CI_Loader. However, I'm not sure this is possible.

Option 2:

I know this is possible if you edit system files, but I would really prefer not doing that. As that makes changes hard to track when updating CI.

Option 3:

???

---

Thoughts?

Edit For Clarification: This is specifically for loading data into views, extending CI_Controller and setting member variables there are ONLY accessible from models and controllers NOT views.

Answer 1

Thank you all for the answers! I figured it out!

You can actually extend over Codeigniter's CI_Loader Class which is pretty cool!

/application/core/MY_Loader.php

class MY_Loader extends CI_Loader
{
    protected $data;

    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();
    }

    public function preload($data = array())
    {
        $this->data = $data;
    }

    public function view($view, $vars = array(), $return = FALSE)
    {
        array_merge($vars, $this->data);
        return parent::view($view, $vars, $return);
    }
}

Usage:

/application/core/MY_Controller.php

class MY_Controller extends CI_Controller
{
    public function __construct()
    {
        //Load CI In
        parent::__construct();
        $this->load->preload(array('foo' => 'bar'));
    }
}

/application/controllers/Controller.php

class Controller extends MY_Controller
{

    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct(); // !!IMPORTANT
    }

    public function index() 
    {
        $this->load->view('index', array('fizz' => 'buzz'));
    }
}

/application/views/index.php

<?php var_dump($foo, $fizz); ?>

Output:

"bar"
"buzz"