simon r jones

Following on from my post on Admin sub-modules I’ve refactored the code into a more generic sub-modules system. And fixed some bugs!

Its main features are:

• Organise modules into sub-folders where you need to support a complex collection of controllers, views, models, etc
• Supports URLs in the format: /sub-module/module/controller/action
• Supports ID route: /sub-module/module/controller/action/id
• Registers controller folder to support above URLs
• Autoloads module resources (using Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader) in the format: submodulenameModulename_Resource (i.e. AdminUser_Form_Registration)

This supports URL routes such as:

www.domain.com/admin/user/ ->
application/admin-modules/user/controllers/IndexController.php

www.domain.com/cms/news ->
application/cms-modules/news/controllers/IndexController.php

It’s a bootstrap resource that can be enabled in your application.ini file as so:

; 'admin' key is the name of sub-module group = path to sub-modules directory
resources.subModules.admin.directory = APPLICATION_PATH "/admin-modules"

• Download S24_Application_Resource_Submodules
• View S24_Application_Resource_Submodules source code

Modules in Zend Framework essentially allow us to organise a collection of controllers into sub-folders, giving URL to filesystem mapping such as:

domain.com/user/register -> app/modules/user/RegisterController.php

While useful when we need to expand our URLs (and organisation of code) beyond one set of controllers, there are a few things they don’t currently solve which I think would make them first-class citizens within ZF.
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