Question

I’m pretty new to CakePHP but not new in any sense to programming. Usually I can figure things out pretty quickly. However I think I need a little help with this one. Looking over the CakePHP Cookbook it explains routes pretty clear. The only thing I’m getting hung up on is route aliases. Maybe I’m getting it wrong but my understanding a far as route aliases go is that it’s just that, an alias. Therefore the original route should exist as well. It doesn’t seem to really work that way.

I created a route for capturing everything with /merchants, creating an alias

Router::connect('/merchants/:action/*', array('controller' => 'users'));

It does what it supposed to do. If I go to /merchants/login, it’s really /users/login. If I go to /users/login, it redirects me to /merchants/login. I do have the Auth component set up in the AppController. If I take Auth out then the alias works as it should. So I’m thinking that Auth is the culprit. Am I trying to be a bit too clever? Is there a better way to do this? Separate logins with the same controller.

Answer 1

This is certainly due to reverse routing. The route you configured makes Cake use /merchants/ instead of /users/ when a link is parsed.

The login action is by default /users/login. So when Cake redirects a user to the login url, /users/ is replaced by /merchants/ in the login url as well.

If you want to force a specific URL for the login that do not use /merchants/, you could declare a more specific route for it like this:

Router::connect('/login',   array('controller' => 'users', 'action' => 'login'));
Router::connect('/merchants/:action/*', array('controller' => 'users'));