Pagination in CodeIgniter, need to disable query strings so we can cache - codeigniter

Question

We have a CI installation that has the following setting in our config...
$config['enable_query_strings'] = TRUE;
We need this in order for another area of our application to run correctly with a third party API. What's happening, however, is that pagination is defaulting to a query string method of doing pagination, which doesn't play well with caching.
Right now, they look like this...
http://localhost/something/?&page=6
It's not playing well with caching, mainly because every page URL is the same page to CI. My goal is to get switched over to the below example without messing with global settings for the rest of my application.
I've been trying for hours to find a way to disable the above setting only within this single part of the application, so that we can properly have separate URLs for the pagination, like this...
http://localhost/something/1
http://localhost/something/2
http://localhost/something/3
So far, I have been unable to overide that setting for this controller, and honestly, I'm not sure there's even a way to actually do it. Any help is appreciated. There's got to be some method of disabling a feature for a single controller somehow.

Answer 1

Could you use routing?
$route['something/page/(:num)'] = "something?&page=$1";
edit: to turn off pagination query strings with $config['enable_query_strings'] = TRUE;
system/libraries/Pagination.php
~line 134
change
if ($CI->config->item('enable_query_strings') === TRUE OR $this->page_query_string === TRUE)
{
if ($CI->input->get($this->query_string_segment) != 0)
{
$this->cur_page = $CI->input->get($this->query_string_segment);
// Prep the current page - no funny business!
$this->cur_page = (int) $this->cur_page;
}
}
else
{
if ($CI->uri->segment($this->uri_segment) != 0)
{
$this->cur_page = $CI->uri->segment($this->uri_segment);
// Prep the current page - no funny business!
$this->cur_page = (int) $this->cur_page;
}
}
to
if ($CI->uri->segment($this->uri_segment) != 0)
{
$this->cur_page = $CI->uri->segment($this->uri_segment);
// Prep the current page - no funny business!
$this->cur_page = (int) $this->cur_page;
}
~line 196
if ($CI->config->item('enable_query_strings') === TRUE OR $this->page_query_string === TRUE)
{
$this->base_url = rtrim($this->base_url).'&'.$this->query_string_segment.'=';
}
else
{
$this->base_url = rtrim($this->base_url, '/') .'/';
}
to
$this->base_url = rtrim($this->base_url, '/') .'/';
that might do it. Or maybe better form would be to hook into the page...

Answer 2

Simple solution...
$this->config->set_item('enable_query_strings',FALSE);
Just put this before you call your pagination logic in the controller. Thanks go to Taftse in the #codeigniter IRC channel for this simple override.