Codeigniter: Creating helper and global message arrays for feedback & errors - codeigniter

Question

So there are instances where there could be one or more errors to report to the user (and to notify me about) that could be caused at a controller level (input, validation) or model level.
I'm considering creating a basic helper for 'feedback' that basically has global message arrays (notice, error, success)
Then either at the model or controller level, if something goes wrong (or right!), I can call the feedback function.
feedback('error','Connection is temporarily down blah')
I won't need to pass it through to my views as it will be globally set so I can just call something like $this->feedback->display_all().
Is this an ok/MVC friendly way to do things? It seems like a straight-foward method for me to implement

Answer 1

For my project, I created a tiny mdl_error model.
This model has one public function, throwError, and some private helpers that will show flash notices to the user and send an email to me with current values and session data if need be. The model is autoloaded and is only called if needed.
Here is basically what it looks like:
<?php
class mdl_error extends CI_Model
{
//types: error, alert, good
function throwError($type, $message, $info="", $flash=true, $email=true)
{
if($flash){
$alert = $type."|".$message;
$this->session->set_userdata(array("flash" => $alert));
}
if($email){
$problems = $this->recursivePrintingOfVariables($info);
$sessionData = $this->recursivePrintingOfVariables($this->session->userdata);
$emailMessage = "Name<br/> <br/>Something has happened. <br/> <br/>";
$emailMessage .= "The type was: {$type}<br/>The message was: {$message}<br/> <br/> <br/>";
$emailMessage .= "Here is the local variables at the time:<br/> <br/>{$problems}<br/> <br/> <br/>";
$emailMessage .= "Here is the session data:<br/> <br/>{$sessionData}<br/> <br/> <br/>";
$emailMessage .= "Please solve this problem or we are all dooooooomed.<br/><br/>Love,<br/>Website";
$this->load->library('email');
$this->email->from("my email");
$this->email->to("error#whatever.com");
$this->email->subject($type.' Message from Website');
$this->email->message($emailMessage);
$this->email->send();
}
}
function recursivePrintingOfVariables($info)
{
$keys = array_keys($info);
$string = "";
foreach($keys as $key){
$string .= $key." => ";
if(is_array($info[$key])){
$string .= "Inner Array<br/>";
$string .= "<div style='margin-left:15px;'>";
$string .= $this->recursivePrintingOfVariables($info[$key]);
$string .= "</div>";
}else{
$string .= $info[$key];
}
$string .= "<br/><br/>";
}
return $string;
}
}
Then, if there is a spot in my code where an error happens, I just call:
$this->mdl_error->throwError("error","something happend", get_defined_vars());

Answer 2

If you use the show_error('Your error message'); function in your controller you will achieve the same. If you want to customise the look of the error you need to work with the error_general.php file found in applications/errors.
If you also want to log the errors you could use the log_message('level', 'message'); function in your controller.