Ggtcf

I'm already pretty good with codeigniter so I feel pretty confident with my code. However, my form validation is not working. Its never passing validation, and never showing any errors. I've dumped out the CI instance and can see my validations are set correctly, but no luck.

Here's the function in my controller

$this->load->helper(array('form', 'url', 'html'));
$this->load->library('form_validation');
$data = array();

$this->form_validation->set_rules('email', 'Email', 'trim|required');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', 'Password', 'trim|required');

$validation_errors = validation_errors();
if( $validation_errors !== FALSE ):
 $data["validation_errors"] = $validation_errors;
endif;

if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE):
 $this->load->view('common/head-auth', $data);
 $this->load->view('pages/page-auth-login', $data);
 $this->load->view('common/foot-auth');
else:
 $this->load->model("site/users_model");
 $this->users_model->login();
endif;

and here's the my view file

<main class="auth">
<header id="auth-header" class="auth-header"></header>

<?php
 $atts = array("class" => 'auth-form');
 echo form_open('auth/login', $atts);
?>
 <div class="form-group">
 <img src="<?php echo base_url( "assets/images/rplogo.png" ); ?>" alt="" width="100%">
 </div>
 <?php
 if( isset( $validation_errors ) ):
 $error_messages = "<div class="alert alert-danger alert-dismissible fade show">";
 $error_messages .= "<button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="alert">×</button>";
 $error_messages .= $validation_errors;
 $error_messages .= "</div>";
 echo $error_messages;
 endif;
 ?>
 <div class="form-group">
 <div class="form-label-group">
 <input type="text" id="inputEmail" class="form-control" placeholder="Email Address" name="email" value="<?php echo set_value('email'); ?>">
 <label for="inputUser">Email Address</label>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="form-group">
 <div class="form-label-group">
 <input type="password" id="inputPassword" class="form-control" placeholder="Password" name="password">
 <label for="inputPassword">Password</label>
 </div>
 </div>
 <div class="form-group">
 <button class="btn btn-lg btn-primary btn-block" type="submit">Log In</button>
 </div>
 <div class="text-center pt-3">
 <a href="auth-recovery-password.html" class="link">Forgot Password?</a>
 </div>

</form>
<footer class="auth-footer"> © 2019 All Rights Reserved. </footer>

and yes I have went through all other posts on this topic without a solution.

Thanks in advance

if ($this->form_validation->run() == FALSE):
 $validation_errors = validation_errors();

 if( $validation_errors !== FALSE ):
 $data["validation_errors"] = $validation_errors;
 endif;

 $this->load->view('common/head-auth', $data);
 $this->load->view('pages/page-auth-login', $data);
 $this->load->view('common/foot-auth');
else:
 $this->load->model("site/users_model");
 $this->users_model->login();
endif;