The latest release of Codeigniter 1.7.2 adds a new shopping cart class to the library which permits items to be added to a session that stays active while a user is browsing the site.

Like all Codeigniter libraries, initilization is done as follows:

$this->load->library('cart');

And items are added to the cart as follows:

$data = array(
               'id'      => 'sku_123ABC',
               'qty'     => 1,
               'price'   => 39.95,
               'name'    => 'T-Shirt',
               'options' => array('Size' => 'L', 'Color' => 'Red')
            );

$this->cart->insert($data);