CodeIgniter: adding a public method

[Miss Scarlet]

I would like to find out if my code is correct. It doesn't look right to me. The code is in response to part of an assignment which asks 3 things:

1. Create Model Class file "booksmodel.php" i.e. "BooksModel".
2. Add public method called save_books() to model class.
3. Accept $_POST array as method argument.

This is my code:

   <?php if ( ! defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

    class BooksModel extends CI_Model {
        public function save_books () {
        $save_books = $_POST['BooksModel'];
        }
    }
    ?>

Accepting a Post Array as method is what confuses me and I can't seem to find clarification on it. Thanks for checking and any feedback.

[mschroeder]

A few points to consider.
CI documentation suggests using an underscore naming convention (Books_model) vs camelcasing like BooksModel. Models should also start with a capital letter and be followed only by lowercase letters.

Also your models should call the parent constructor.

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

Finally for a method to accept a post array as a method argument it means your method should look like:

public function fooBar( $post ){
    //...
}

And would be used as:

$this->model->fooBar( $_POST ); //or the post object in CI

[cereal]

Also, you can use $this->input->post('fieldname'); instead of $_POST['fieldname'] and you can just write: $this->books->save_books();

http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/input.html

[Miss Scarlet]

Thanks mschroeder. It does help. I've never worked with PHP or had any oop, and now they threw in Codeigniter into the mix. :)

Thanks for including the function_construct which I would not have thought of. I saw it over at the Codeigniter Manual too. thanks for the help.

[Miss Scarlet]

Thanks cereal, I'll take a look at that too. We are also learning this in conjunction with phpMyAdmin.
I'm going to take the rest of the night off from it all; a little burned out on it tonight!

Thanks