I have reworked this a million ways and cant find why its null

leaving out the md5 hash and placing it inline
passing strings directly to function

login\_view.php

```
<form class="form-signin" action="<?php echo site_url('login/auth'); ?>" method="post">
       <h2 class="form-signin-heading">Please sign in</h2>
       <?php echo $this->session->flashdata('msg');?>
       <label for="username" class="sr-only">Username</label>
       <input type="email" name="email" class="form-control" placeholder="Email" required autofocus>
       <label for="password" class="sr-only">Password</label>
       <input type="password" name="password" class="form-control" placeholder="Password" required>
       <div class="checkbox">
         <label>
           <input type="checkbox" value="remember-me"> Remember me
         </label>
       </div>
       <button class="btn btn-lg btn-primary btn-block" type="submit" >Sign in</button>
     </form>

```

login.php

```
function auth(){
$email    = $this->input-> post('email');
$password = $this->input-> post('password');
$validate = $this->login_model->validate($email,$password);

```

cant retrieve POST items as normal