Custom Front End Forms in a Plugin

Currently I have EE 2.0 up and running without any problems. Using structure to mange the content

The problem is I need to display data from a 3rd party database that has data (calendar of events).

I have already written a plugin that gets the 5 upcoming events.

Now I would like to extend this plugin to do the following, return a list of events paginated, display a search form on the page so the user can “filter” default listing of events.

I already have all of the code written as the data is also used in another site that was built on top of Code Ignitor. I should be able to port a good chunk of the search and pagination over.

My question is, what is the correct way to display a custom form in an EE template so it can interact with a plugin on the back end?

I’ve been using Code Ignitor for over 4 years, just having some problems using the same libraries in EE.

Link CI powered search engine: http://www.visitbristoltnva.org/events

Thanks