codeigniter show how many threads in a category

Question

im working on a forum in codeigniter and i want to show how many Threds there is in a category, but my problem is that it only shows the categorys that allready have been posted in.

and i want to show ALL the category although there is no posts in it. how can i do that ?.

here is my model file

//Load the category list to the forum frontpage
function loadCategoryList() {

    $this->db->select('forumCategory.id as categoryID, category, description, COUNT(forumThread.id) as threadID');
    $this->db->where('forumCategory.approved', 'yes');
    $this->db->join('forumThread', 'forumThread.fk_forumCategory = forumCategory.id');
    $this->db->group_by('categoryID');
    $loadCategory = $this->db->get('forumCategory');

    return $loadCategory->result();

}

Answer 1

When you join forumThread, you are eliminating records in your result set that don't have threads. Left join it instead to leave those in.

$this->db->join('forumThread', 'forumThread.fk_forumCategory = forumCategory.id', 'left');

More details here: http://codeigniter.com/user_guide/database/active_record.html