The standard rewrite router should provide most functionality you may need; most often, you will only need to create a new route type in order to provide new or modified functionality over the provided routes.
That said, you may at some point find yourself wanting to use a
different routing paradigm. The interface
Zend_Controller_Router_Interface provides the minimal
information required to create a router, and consists of a single
method.
<?php
interface Zend_Controller_Router_Interface
{
/**
* @param Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request
* @throws Zend_Controller_Router_Exception
* @return Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract
*/
public function route(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request);
}
Routing only occurs once: when the request is first received into the system. The purpose of the router is to determine the controller, action, and optional parameters based on the request environment, and then set them in the request. The request object is then passed to the dispatcher. If it is not possible to map a route to a dispatch token, the router should do nothing to the request object.