There are several ways to access the database from a Ushahidi 2.x controller: 

• Calling functions in Kohana models - this is preferred (we're working in an Model-View-Controller framework) 
• Calling the Kohana ORM - occasionally (e.g. for simple queries or a rare database access across multiple database tables).  ORM calls are also preferred in the model functions called above. 
• Using mysql code - bad and naughty, but sometimes necessary in Kohana 2.3.1, which doesn't handle things like joins and groups well (Kohana 3 is better).

Model calls

Examples of accessing database tables using their models:

In the reports controller: 

$total_reports = Incident_Model::get_total_reports(TRUE);

In the incident model: 

public static function get_total_reports($approved = FALSE)
 {
 return ($approved)
 ? ORM::factory('incident')->where('incident_active', '1')->count_all()
 : ORM::factory('incident')->count_all();
 }

Note that the incident model uses an ORM call to access the incident table in the database. 

ORM calls

If you look at the Ushahidi v2.x code, you'll see a lot of ORM calls. For instance:

To return a row from the table when you know the row id: 

    $report = ORM::factory('incident', $category_id);

To return all rows from a table: 

    $reports = ORM::factory('incident')->find_all();

To return the number of rows from a table: 

    $reportcount = ORM::factory('incident')->count_all();

These are made more useful by adding filters, ordering etc to the ORM calls, e.g. 

    $reports = ORM::factory('incident')

      ->where('incident_verified', '1')

      ->where('incident_active', '1')

      ->find_all();

    $reports = ORM::factory('incident')

      ->orderby(array('incident_date'=>'ASC'))

      ->find_all();

The ORM library is powerful and has many more things it can do - see the Kohana ORM Library pages for more information on these. 

MySQL Calls

If you have to do this, here's how:

• create a database object to call: 

    $db = new Database();

• Create your convoluted sql statement:
• Call the database with your sql statement:

    $db->query($sql);