help developing a basic url routing for mvc

[syed]

Hi guys, I am developing an MVC application and need some advice about how to set up url routing. Currently I can map a uri to modules/controllers and actions. I though I might leave the routing to last but it seems like that might have been a bad idea. Initially I though I might implement a Zend style routing approach and I still want to do this, but I am lost for thoughs on how I might go about this, I have looked at the zend router classes and understand the principle but cant seem to implement it in my own mvc.

 

So far I have this,

$router is an instance of a router class. mapRoute takes a route name and a route object as parameters. The name will be used for convinience. The second parameter takes a route instance which currently takes two parameters, where param1 is a route pattern and param2 is deafult values for when a uri macthes the route pattern. So if a user types http://example/user/23,

 

the router should map to user controller, profile action. The id, which is 23, will need to be injected into a request object. Finally the router object will be added to a front controller instance, so the front controller object can gain access to all the routes.

 

                $router->mapRoute("user", new Route(
                                "user/<id>",
                                array(
                                    "controller"=>"user",
                                    "action"=>"profile"
                                )
                            )
                );

 

If any one has any ideas please do share, im not after code, unless you want to supply some, I just need some advice to stream line the whole process or what the best way might be. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[trq]

There is a pretty good example here which I loosely used to build the routing in my framework.

[syed]

Hi Thorpe, thanks for the article, explained a alot and set me on my way. I had this whole complex spliting and recursive check inmind. It never occured to me, to construct a regex pattern and compare it to the uri. Thanks for the article, you rock.