Thread: Boostraping modules, models and all the fun

A few things.
Firstly, the "default" module doesn't belong under the modules directory. The default module is the application itself and lives directly under application/

Add

Code:

resources.modules = ""
resources.frontController.moduleDirectory = APPLICATION_PATH "/modules"

to appliction.ini to initialize the module resource plugin and set the modules directory.

Create modules/admin/Bootstrap.php and fill it with
[php]
<?php
class Auth_Bootstrap extends Zend_Application_Module_Bootstrap
{
}
[/php]
to bootstrap the module, including setting up resource autoloaders for models, forms, services etc.

Add this function
[php]
protected function _initAutoload()
{
new Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader(array(
'basePath' => APPLICATION_PATH,
'namespace' => 'Default',
));
}
[/php]
to your application/Bootstrap.php to initialize the resource autoloaders for the default module. "Default" can be changed to whatever you are prefixing your resources (models, forms, services etc) of your default module with - often the application name.

I've also blogged about turning the Guestbook application from the Quickstart guide into a module, there might be some more information there: Brenton Alker’s Deprecated Behaviour Building a Modular Application in Zend Framework – Part 2

Hm, but why shouldn't reside the 'default' in the module area? To some point it has the same structure like any other module (controllers, models and views).

If you use a modular approach the zf tool creates all modules inside the modules folder but keeps the models folder outside. This behavior is hard to understand for me. I understand that in the models folder may reside all kind of tables that can be used general all over the application, but shouldn't this be made available from the modules/default/models to maintain the application architecture.

Thank you for your comment, i succeeded to add the default module in the format i want just by adding this code in the application bootstrap file:

[PHP]
protected function _initAutoLoad()
{

$autoloader = new Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader(
array(
'namespace' => 'Default',
'basePath' => APPLICATION_PATH . '/modules/default'),
array(
'namespace' => 'Admin',
'basePath' => APPLICATION_PATH . '/modules/admin')
);
return $autoloader;
}
[/PHP]

I am not very proud with this code but for the moment it seems that this is the only one way to solve this.

Default module resources (controllers, models, views, etc.) should be placed outside modules directory, like Tekerson said. Idea is to make that default module and its resources some kind of global scope...

You shouldn't instantiate Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader for every module. Each module, in modules directory should have its own boostrap (Boostrap.php), which extends Zend_Application_Module_Bootstrap. In that case, if you put this line in your config file: resources.modules = "", an instance of Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader will be created by default for each discrete module, allowing you to autoload module resources.

But if you still want to hold your default module in modules directory, its Boostrap class should extend Zend_Application_Module_Bootstrap, and then you have to tell front controller what module is default.

Hi,

I tried using the above said method, but its not loading my models.

[PHP]
protected function _initAutoLoad()
{

$moduleLoader = new Zend_Application_Module_Autoloader(
array('namespace'=>'Backend','basePath'=>APPLICATI ON_PATH . '/modules/backend'),
array('namespace' => 'Frontend','basePath' => APPLICATION_PATH . '/modules/frontend'));

return $moduleLoader;
}
[/PHP]

What I am trying is I have a class Frontend_Model_Language() in modules/frontend/models/Language.php. This class is not getting loaded.

Any idea why is it so?

Thanks for your time!

regards,
Aneesh

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