It's been a while since I wrote CI, but as per this docs page , your solution might look like this: $this ->db->select( '*' ); $this ->db->from( 'table1' ); $this ->db->join( 'table2' , 'table1.col1 = table2.col1' ); $this ->db->where( 'table1.col1' , 2 ); $query = $this ->db->get(); note this answer is in no way to be construed as an endorsement of working with Code Igniter ;-)