Extending the IndexController with a BaseController in Zend

Question

I'm trying to extend my controllers with a global base controller as such:

class BaseController extends Zend_Controller_Action {
 // common controller actions
    public function listAction() {
        // do stuff
    }
}

class IndexController extends BaseController {
 // index controller specific actions
}

class LoginController extends BaseController {
 // login controller specific actions
}

But I get this error: PHP Fatal error: Class 'BaseController' not found in /var/www/Zend/project/application/controllers/IndexController.php on line 3

Any ideas on how to get Zend to "see" this controller?

Answer 1

the quick solution that does not take advantage of the autoloader functionality is to require_once '/path/to/BaseController.php' in the index-controller file.

If you have set-up autocontroller, then it can not find it, so you should consider checking what's wrong. Try the previous approach and inform on results.

Answer 2

Autoloader

Setup the autoloader and register your library which should be besides the Zend library with the autoloader like so (in your bootstrap.php after setting the include path):

//AutoLoad loads classes automatically if they are used
require_once 'Zend/Loader/Autoloader.php';
$loader = Zend_Loader_Autoloader::getInstance();
$loader->registerNamespace('Mylibrary_');

Zend naming conventions

Then you should rename your BaseController as follows

/Zend (folder)
/Mylibrary (folder)
    /Controller (folder)
        Action.php <-- this is your basecontroller file

which contains:

class Mylibrary_Controller_Action extends Zend_Controller_Action
{
}

and your normal controllers in the controller folder:

class IndexController extends Mylibrary_Controller_Action
{
}

so basically when you want to extend the framework you keep a parallel structure in your own library.