Question

I discovered an issue with Magento routing logic and I would like to see if anyone can confirm this.

Magento stacks routers admin, standard, then default and processes them one at a time. Magento gets the current module name based on the URL (see Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Router_Standard::match()), then checks if the module should be handled by this router, based on a match to a frontName in the Magento config. If a match is found, it routes it. If not, it continues to the next router.

Config excerpt:

    <admin>
        <routers>
            <myroute>
                <use>admin</use>
                <args>
                    <module>MyNamespace_MyModule</module>
                    <frontName>myroute</frontName>
                </args>
            </myroute>
        </routers>
    </admin>
    <frontend>
        <routers>
            <myroute>
                <use>admin</use>
                <args>
                    <module>MyNamespace_MyModule</module>
                    <frontName>myroute</frontName>
                </args>
            </myroute>
        </routers>
    </frontend>
    

This means that if you use the same name for your frontend router as your admin router, the admin router will always be matched first, even on frontend pages. Your frontend page will now route as is if were an admin page, using the admin base_url, which may be different from your store’s URL causing a broken redirect.

Note that this issue is not apparent in Magento instances where the admin base URL is the same as the frontend base URL.

Can anyone confirm that my assesment of the router logic is correct here?

Answer 1

This is not a Magento bug, but is something to be aware of when writing modules or working with third party code. I have clarified the issue and resolution here. Essentially, the existing adminhtml route should always be used rather than creating new admin routes. This makes urls in the admin consistent and avoids conflicts. Thank you Alan and Jared for helping me understand Magento routing better.