I'm stuck on a rudimentary question that's just boggling my mind right now. I'm setting $vars['catName'] in my controller and I keep getting the error Undefined Index : catName". The $vars['patterns'] is accessible from the view and I know that $vars['catName'] contains data because my page title contains the correct info.

Controller:

<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');

Class Patterns extends CI_Controller {

function index($categoryId = null)
{
$vars['catName'] = "";

$this->load->model('patterns_access_model');
if(!is_null($categoryId)) {
$vars['patterns'] = $this->patterns_access_model->get_patterns_by_id($categoryId);
$vars['catName'] = $this->patterns_access_model->get_category_by_id($categoryId);
}

// set your variables
$vars = array('page_title' => 'Check Out Our List Of '.$vars['catName'].' Patterns | Campbell Custom Coatings');

// use Fuel_page to render so it will grab all opt-in variables and do any necessary parsing
$page_init = array('location' => 'patterns', 'render_mode' => 'cms');
$this->load->module_library(FUEL_FOLDER, 'fuel_page', $page_init);
$this->fuel_page->add_variables($vars);
$this->fuel_page->render();
}
}



I have this in my view:

<h1>CatName = <?php echo $catName; ?></h1>


and when I import it into fuel, the dwoo parsing looks like this:

<h1>CatName = {$catName}</h1>


Am i missing something?