Chris Morrell

Someone was recently asking on ZFTalk about how to use a different layout for each module in your application. Since this is a problem I’ve dealt with in the past and planned on adding to the Galahad FE, I thought I’d quickly write up a tutorial on how to do it:

First, download the Plugin

Put the following class in a library/Galahad/Controller/Plugin/Modularlayout.php file (you’ll probably have to create all those directories and the file).

<?php
/**
* This file is part of the Galahad Framework Extension.
*
* The Galahad Framework Extension is free software: you can redistribute
* it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
* as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
* License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
* The Galahad Framework Extension is distributed in the hope that it will
* be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty
* of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
* General Public License for more details.
*
* @category  Galahad
* @package   Galahad
* @copyright Copyright (c) 2009 Chris Morrell <http://cmorrell.com>
* @license   GPL <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
* @version   0.2
*/

/**
* Use separate layout per module
*
* @category   Galahad
* @package    Galahad
* @copyright  Copyright (c) 2009 Chris Morrell <http://cmorrell.com>
* @license    GPL <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>
*/
class Galahad_Controller_Plugin_Modularlayout extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract
{
     public function routeShutdown(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request)
     {
          Zend_Layout::getMvcInstance()->setLayout($request->getModuleName());
     }
}

Next, add the Galahad namespace

Update your Bootstrap.php file’s autoloader initialization method (if you don’t have one, add one):

protected function _initAutoloaders()
{
	$this->getApplication()->setAutoloaderNamespaces(array('Galahad_'));
	return $this;
}

Please note: You might need to have other namespaces in there, like My_ or App_ or Default_.

Next, add the Plugin

Update your Bootstrap.php file’s plugin initialization method (if you don’t have one, add one):

protected function _initPlugins()
{
	$this->bootstrap('autoloaders');
	$this->bootstrap('frontController');

	$plugin = new Galahad_Controller_Plugin_Modularlayout();
        $this->frontController->registerPlugin($plugin);
}

And you’re set!

Just make sure you have a layout file in your layouts directory for each module (modulename.phtml).

For some reason this took me a long time to figure out, so I thought I’d post it in case other people are having similar problems.  I wanted www.mysite.com to route to the www module and app.mysite.com to route to the app module.  In the end it was quite simple—I was trying to make it much more complicated than it needed to.

I’m using Zend Framework 1.8.4 with Zend_Application

Here’s my router configuration:

resources.router.routes.www.type = "Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Hostname"
resources.router.routes.www.route = ":module.mysite.com"
resources.router.routes.www.defaults.module = "www"
resources.router.routes.www.chains.index.type = "Zend_Controller_Router_Route"
resources.router.routes.www.chains.index.route = ":controller/:action/*"
resources.router.routes.www.chains.index.defaults.controller = "index"
resources.router.routes.www.chains.index.defaults.action = "index"

And here’s my .htaccess rule that redirect to www if another subdomain is used (or no subdomain is given):

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www|app)\.mysite\.(com|local)
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.%2/$1 [R=302,QSA,L]

Otherwise it’s just your standard modular structure generated with the zf tool.