Zend Framework is a popular web development language based on PHP. It allows developers to quickly access vital information on environment variables and HTTP request information at all parts of the application.
The front controller of Zend is what is called a singleton. It’s easy to think of it as a global variable that can be accessed at will, no matter where you are in the development stack. The first lesson is simple: just because you have this power does not mean you should use it. Singleton patterns are not very popular because they lead to confusion. If you are working in the view, you should not be accessing the front controller directly, as dictated in MVC design.
The view of a Zend Framework application is where all template code goes. Due to its nature, it’s not acceptable to put logic code here. Because we aren’t able to use the HTTP request singleton, we instead have access to a view helper. This helper is name the Server Url helper, and it is used to return the URL or URI. Further modification or need for information should be done in the controller and then passed to the view for access.
Controllers have direct access to the request object. This is because every standard controller in Zend extends the Zend Controller Action. This class file contains methods to access the HTTP request through several different methods. One is able to get the scheme, the domain, path to the current script, and parameters with ease. The parameters method is specifically useful, as it returns parameters as an array.
The library files you work with likely will not extend the Zend Controller Action. Thus, you won’t have direct access to the request object. The good news is that the front controller is a singleton, as we discussed earlier. This means that all a developer needs to do is create a new instance of the object and then access the HTTP request just like in the controller. While this is very helpful, it’s recommended that developers not make their own singletons in this fashion.
To make things easier in getting a base URL, you may use a base URL helper. This allows you to quickly access a set base URL in any part of the application. You set this helper in the bootstrap and in your application configuration file. The base URL helper takes more time in setting up, but it’s a joy to have when working in the view to quickly piece together URL information.
In Conclusion
PHP makes it easy to access HTTP request information through global server variables. While that is easy, it’s not exactly considered ideal for MVC design. Use the Zend Framework implementation of the HTTP request object so your code is clean, concise, and consistent with the design goals of the Zend Framework project.
Use the zend get url information provided here and on Zend Framework blog networks to learn more about building interactive websites.





