Function Overloading in CodeIgniter

Question

I was wondering if you could overload functions in PHP, specifically in CodeIgniter. For instance in my Controller if I were to load a view, but it would differ whether a variable was supplied as a parameter or if it was left blank. This is the concept I tried, which is how I learned in other languages:

<?php
  function load_view(){
     $this->load->view('view');
  }

  function load_view($var){
    $this->load->model('data');
    $data = $this->data->getInfo($var);
    $this->load->view('view', $data);
  }
?>

But when I tried this, I get an error "Fatal error: Cannot redeclare Controller::load_view"...

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

In PHP to overload functions use optional parameters. An example might be:

function load_view($var = null) {
     if (!empty($var)) {
         $this->load->model('data');
         $data = $this->data->getInfo($var);
         $this->load->view('view', $data);
     } else {
         $this->load->view('view');
     }
}