I've seen the topic of an admin module come up several times and I wanted to share a simple solution that worked for me.

Create an AdminController in your default module that forwards the request to "Admin Actions."

For example, if you have a BooksController that allows anyone to view a list of books but only a small group of admins to edit the books, you would create two methods:

BooksController::viewAction

BooksController::editAdminAction

The first method would be tied to the /books/view using the normal action naming convention. Rather than using /books/edit-admin to get to the second method, the AdminController would simply forward /admin/books/edit to the second method.

There is most likely cleaner code to do this, but here's one way that works:

class AdminController extends Zend_Controller_Action 
{
    public function preDispatch()
    {
        $uri = $this->getUri();
        $count = count($uri);
        if ($count > 1)
        {
            $controller = $uri[1];
            $action = $count > 2 ? $uri[2] : 'index';
            $action = $this->toCamelCase($action);

            if (class_exists($controller))
                $this->_forward($action .'-admin', $controller);
        }
    }              
        
    public function getURI()
    {
        $uri = $this->_request->getRequestUri();
        $uri = substr($uri, 1);
        $uri = preg_replace('/^(.*?)?.*?$/', '$1', $uri);
        if (strlen($uri) > 0 && substr($uri, -1, 1) == '/')
            $uri = substr($uri, 0, -1);
        return explode('/', $uri);
    }
    
    public function toCamelCase($str)
    {
        $str = str_replace('-', '_', $str);
        $str = explode('_', strtolower($str));
        $count = count($str);
        for ($i=1; $i<$count; $i++)
            $str[$i] = ucfirst($str[$i]);
        $str = implode("", $str);
        return $str;
    }
}

Hope this helps someone.

I'm struggling with the some problem. I am currently planning my CMS, and for now I think I am going to stick as well with just the two module - site & admin.

The thing I am wondering is what to do with some of the directives in my bootstrap file.

I am initializing Zend_Layout MVC helper with something like this:

Zend_Layout::startMvc(array('layoutPath' => ROOT_DIR.'/application/views/layouts'));

Which works great if you are nor using module.

As far as I can tell, there is only one right way to do it, and that is to write your own front controller plugin that will set the appropriate path, see http://www.nabble.com/Setup-Zend_Layout-based-on-module-td16036883.html

There is some more insight in a comment from Matthew Weier O'Phinney on http://framework.zend.com/wiki/display/ZFPROP/Zend_Layout#Zend_Layout-3.ComponentRequirements%2CConstraints%2CandAcceptanceCriteria that kind of clarifies why this Zend_Layout isn't coupled with a rewrite router.

But, I would still be very happy if I could specify layout folder in the same way I can specify a modular structure by passing an array of modules/paths.

Do you maybe have some other ideas?

Not yet. I haven't had time, so have been using two modules: default and admin.

Regards,

Rob...

Putting the admin within the module keeps everything together which is the biggest win. I quite like the idea of using a rewrite rule so that I can use URLs of the form /admin/{module}/{controller}/{action}.

I’ll definitely have to play with this layout.
[/quote]

Have you figured out how you should write this rewrite rule?
I am currently implementing an admin-subdirectory too in my controllers directory, and /module/admin/controller/action is just more beautiful than /module/admin_controller/action...

$view->addScriptPath('../application/moduleLocation/views');
and executed this in my index.php

I see the post by Kyle
"If I want different models with each module then I have a Zend_Controller plugin that adds to the include path using something like: “..app/”.$request->getModuleName().”/models/”
"

I suppose there isn't a getModuleName() function already?

I'll work on this. Thanks for your comments.

Any thoughts?

Fixed the pre tag :)

Regards,

Rob...