Zend-Framework: how we do this without module?

Sorry this is a pretty long question, but i want to have some disucssions here.

i am new to zend and try to avoid using modules as I think the view aspect of zend is pretty flexible and module will add extra directory and confusion. However i am wondering one thing. The app i am building is pretty big it actually has the modules concept in the app.

I know if using module, things can be more organised, where you can put modules in its own directory and have seperate view and controller etc.

however i decided to simulate module directory in the form of

--lang/module(in fact the controller)/controller(that's the action)/action(that's the child-action)/other-params/--

how we go about and do this kind of simulation

The initial idea i have is add another route to the application take the 4th param as the child-action. e.g

class some_controller extend extends Zend_Controller_Action{

public function someAction{

    switch (child-action) {
        case 'child-action1':
            ....... excute some action
            break;
        case 'child-action2':
            ....... excute some action
            break;....
    }

}

something like that. Does that make sense or if there's any other approach? and with this approach how we integrate Zend_ACL as how to add the 'fake child action' as a resource? Thank you.

Solution

Perhaps you could set up your routes like so:

 /:controller/:action/:child-action

See here for more info on setting up routes.

Then in your action methods:

 $childAction = $this->getParam('child-action');

 // convert $childAction to camelCase.

 if(method_exists($this, $childAction))
 {
      // Check ACL
      $this->$childAction();
 }

Do not name child actions with the Action postfix as that would allow the actions to be called directly. You could maybe postfix them with something like 'fooChild' but not 'fooChildAction' as they would then map to 'foo-child'.