How to add an ORDER BY clause using CodeIgniter's Active Record methods?

I believe the get() function immediately runs the select query and does not accept ORDER BY conditions as parameters. I think you'll need to separately declare the conditions, then run the query. Give this a try:

$this->db->from($this->table_name);
$this->db->order_by("name", "asc");
$query = $this->db->get(); 
return $query->result();

CodeIgniter Documentation order_by()

Using this code to multiple order by in single query.

$this->db->from($this->table_name);
$this->db->order_by("column1 asc,column2 desc");
$query = $this->db->get(); 
return $query->result();

Simple and easy:

$this->db->order_by("name", "asc");
$query = $this->db->get($this->table_name);
return $query->result();