Custom config file for codeigniter

Very new to CodeIgniter, trying to create a custom config file to load special variables into my application.

in application/config/ I created custom.php and placed the following code in that file:

<?php  if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

$gender = array ('male','female'); 

?>

I then opened up application/config/autoload and altered the following code:

$autoload['config'] = array();

/* TO: */ 

$autoload['config'] = array('custom');

I refresh my application and see this error:

Your application/config/custom.php file does not appear to contain a valid configuration array.

I opened up some of the default config files and don’t see a configuration array? What am I doing wrong?

Answer

Use

$config['gender']= array ('male','female');

instead of

$gender = array ('male','female');

For fetching config item

$this->config->item('item_name');

Where item_name is the $config array index you want to retrieve.

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