PHP/codeigniter - use of exit()

Question

I have a few pages that require login, so all controllers that link to these pages start with

$this->checkSession();
//...rest of the code

Answer 1

In this case Pedro is correct. If they are not logged in just redirect them, it's even better if you can use Public/Admin named base controllers to stop you having to do this in each separate protected file.

Generally speaking though, if you use exit() it will stop the Output library for running. If you just want to stop the current controller from executing but allow output of the controller you can use return in exactly the same way.

function checkSession()
{
    return (bool) $this->session->userdata('is_logged_in');
}

Then simply:

if(!$this->checkSession())
{
        //the session has expired!
        $data['main'] = 'confirmation_message';
        $data['title'] = "Session expired";
        $this->load->vars($data);
        $this->load->view('template');
        return;
}

exit() should only ever be used if you really want instant death of your application's execution for debugging, error reporting, etc.