Routing for country , province , city , product in Zend Framework

Question

This url structure is proposed for SEO optimization. So suggesting another structure will not work. Structure proposed is

example.com/<language>/<country>/<province>/<city>/<product>

example.com/en/spain I wish to point to CountryController indexAction , as view of each one is different, and sometimes think there is change in layout also.

Show the content in English language about the country Spain. And for a request example.com/en/india should show about India in English language and example.com/es/spain should show the spanish page for the country Spain.

example.com/en/spain/barcelona Points to CountryController provinceAction

Content Page for the Barcelona province of Spain in English Language .

example.com/en/spain/barcelona/barcelona Points to CountryController cityAction

Content Page for the Barcelona city in Barcelona province of country Spain in English Language .

example.com/en/spain/barcelona/barcelona/taxis Points to CountryController productAction

Content Page for the product in Barcelona city , Barcelona province of country Spain in English Language .

Yes we can add a route like

$router = $ctrl->getRouter();
$router->addRoute(
    'country_spain',
    new Zend_Controller_Router_Route('spain',
                                     array('controller' => 'country',
                                           'action' => 'index'))
);

But in this case we need to add the whole list of countries to the route. ie india , china , pakistan , unitedstates etc .

Then will be adding country_province

$router = $ctrl->getRouter();
$router->addRoute(
    'country_spain_barcelona',
    new Zend_Controller_Router_Route('spain',
                                     array('controller' => 'country',
                                           'action' => 'province'))
);

So if we have 50 province it will be horrible to add count of countries multiplied by count of provinces for the countries , and this will become more routes when moving to city and products.

You may say add something like

$router = $ctrl->getRouter();
$router->addRoute(
    'country',
    new Zend_Controller_Router_Route('country/:country/:province/:city/:product',
                                     array('controller' => 'country',
                                           'action' => 'index'))
);

But in this case its like we will be pointing to same action, but as the view of the requests change, and this will become a fat controller .

The problem with Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Regex is we should have something like example.com/en/country/spain/barcelona/barcelona/taxis and also the all moves to a single action. As the view is entirely different, it becomes dirty. May be something like partials I can use. But I wonder whether there is another good solution for the problem to solve this. This is a legacy project, so I have limitations on it and #ZF version is 1.6.

There is an example something similar

http://www.travelportal.info/ http://www.travelportal.info/asia http://www.travelportal.info/asia/india http://www.travelportal.info/asia/india/business-currency-economy

How do you think, they have done this, will they have added routes atleast for asia , europe like that ?

I was able to make it work like

example.com/en/spain Pointing to CountryController indexAction

example.com/en/spain/barcelona Pointing to CountryController provinceAction

example.com/en/spain/barcelona/barcelona Pointing to CountryController cityAction

example.com/en/spain/barcelona/barcelona/taxis Pointing to CountryController productAction

But there I need to add 4 routes and this will become hard to manually add the route like this.

Suggestions and criticisms are welcome to make it better.

Answer 1

It seems like you want a separate route for each of your example scenarios, e.g.:

$router->addRoute(
    'product',
    new Zend_Controller_Router_Route(':lang/:country/:province/:city/:product', array(
        'controller' => 'country',
        'action' => 'product'
    ))
);

$router->addRoute(
    'city',
    new Zend_Controller_Router_Route(':lang/:country/:province/:city', array(
        'controller' => 'country',
        'action' => 'city'
    ))
);

$router->addRoute(
    'province',
    new Zend_Controller_Router_Route(':lang/:country/:province', array(
        'controller' => 'country',
        'action' => 'province'
    ))
);

$router->addRoute(
    'country',
    new Zend_Controller_Router_Route(':lang/:country', array(
        'controller' => 'country',
        'action' => 'index'
    ))
);