Question

I’m using the zend framework for my project – I’ve tried to set up using clean links – however I’ve noticed that my links seem to be getting really really long and wonder if at this point there would be a way to incorporate a structure where I could user smaller links.

Heres an example my website has a directory controller, which has a person action which takes an id parameter – so then a link to see a person of a certin id looks like:

www.mywebsite.com/directory/person/id/1809

It seems ok but I’m working now to make links more readable and search engine friendly – I would like to have something like – assuming the user ID 1809 is named John Smith:

www.mywebsite.com/directory/person/John-Smith-1809

Something really basic like the following would be even better:

www.mywebsite.com/John-Smith-1809

Although I don’t know how I could manage that without mentioning a controller or action…any ideas guys would really help…

Answer 1

Have a look at the ZF Manual on how to use Routes.

Basically, you need something like this to make it work:

$route = new Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Regex(
    '(.+)-(\d+)',
    array(
        'controller' => 'directory',
        'action'     => 'person'
    ),
    array(
        1 => 'name',
        2 => 'id'
    ),
    '%s-%d'
);
$router->addRoute('directoryPerson', $route);

Note: don’t expect this to run out of the box. You will likely have to modify it. Should get you into the right direction though.