Zend_Controller_Front implements a Front
Controller pattern used in Model-View-Controller
(MVC) applications. Its purpose is to initialize the
request environment, route the incoming request, and then dispatch
any discovered actions; it aggregates any responses and returns them
when the process is complete.
Zend_Controller_Front also implements the Singleton
pattern, meaning only a single instance of it may be available at
any given time. This allows it to also act as a registry on which
the other objects in the dispatch process may draw.
Zend_Controller_Front registers a plugin broker with
itself, allowing various events it triggers to be observed by
plugins. In most cases, this gives the developer the opportunity to
tailor the dispatch process to the site without the need to extend
the front controller to add functionality.
At a bare minimum, the front controller needs one or more paths to directories containing action controllers in order to do its work. A variety of methods may also be invoked to further tailor the front controller environment and that of its helper classes.
Default Behaviour
By default, the front controller loads the ErrorHandler plugin, as well as the ViewRenderer action helper plugin. These are to simplify error handling and view renderering in your controllers, respectively.
To disable the ErrorHandler, perform the following
at any point prior to calling dispatch():
<?php
// Disable the ErrorHandler plugin:
$front->setParam('noErrorHandler', true);
To disable the ViewRenderer, do the following prior
to calling dispatch():
<?php
// Disable the ViewRenderer helper:
$front->setParam('noViewRenderer', true);