i posted here in hope this help someone since this is an old post and the answers are no help at all, this code works for me, also the model part is not here so you must figure it out reading codeigniter's docs , i think this will work if you put it in your controller, also it think the submit form must be pointing this function
function upload() {
$caption = $this->input->post('caption');
$codigo = $this->input->post('codigo');
//$imagen = $this->input->post('imagen');
$config['upload_path'] = 'uploads';// this is a directory with 777 permissions where you upload the file
$config['allowed_types'] = 'gif|jpg|jpeg|png|pdf';
//$config['max_size'] = '5000';
$this->load->library('upload', $config);
if (!$this->upload->do_upload('imagen')) { // this is the input from the form
echo $this->upload->display_errors();
} else {
//here $file_data receives an array that has all the info
//pertaining to the upload, including 'file_name'
$file_data = $this->upload->data();
$fp = fopen($file_data['full_path'], 'r');
$content = fread($fp, filesize($file_data['full_path']));
//$content = addslashes($content);
fclose($fp);
$data = array( // this is the table i got in my db
'idBotones' => null,
'imagen' => $content, //blob image
'caption' => $caption,
'codigo' => $codigo
);
$this->load->model('generic_model');
$table = "botones";
$this->generic_model->insertar_datos($table, $data);
//print_r($content);
}
}