Force Zend Framework to use the index controller by default

Maze

Everyone wants pretty URLs these days—both for convenience and to optimize for search engines. So having URLs with unnecessary information is a major no-no. Over the past year I’ve been slowly absorbing the Zend Framework and its MVC pattern. Historically, projects I created required the user to specify the index controller like so:


http://www.mysite.com/index/page

…where “index” is the controller and “page” is the action. Since almost all people will be using the index controller, why is it in the URL? Want to get rid of it? Add the following to your application.ini file in the production section:


# Routes
resources.router.routes.default.route = /:action
resources.router.routes.default.defaults.controller = index
resources.router.routes.default.defaults.action = index

Now your application will use the index controller by default so your URLs will be even prettier:


http://www.mysite.com/page

But wait! What if you need to access a different controller? Maybe an admin controller (or module)? Add this beneath the previous addition:


resources.router.routes.admin.route = /admin/:action
resources.router.routes.admin.defaults.controller = admin
resources.router.routes.admin.defaults.action = index

The downside, of course, is that for each additional controller you create, you’ll need to add these three lines to your application.ini file. Luckily for me, I don’t anticipate having very many controllers.

While this technique may seem obvious, I couldn’t find it anywhere on Google. So, if you’re successfully doing this some other way, please share in the comments.

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