Creating custom Route classes

In the recipe Adding catch-all routes for profile pages we created routes so that profile pages can be accessed specifying only the user name in the URL. However, that implementation had a problem: we had to disallow the automatic access of the index action.

This recipe shows a different approach to our profile URL generation, by creating a custom route implementation that not only overcomes this problem, but makes sure the route is utilized only for existing profile records.

Getting ready

We need some sample data to work with. Follow the Getting ready section of the recipe Adding catch-all routes for profile pages.

How to do it...

1. 1. Edit your app/config/routes.php file and add the following routes at the end of the file:

   App::import('Lib', 'ProfileRoute');
   Router::connect('/:userName',
   array('controller' => 'profiles', 'action' => 'view'),
   array(
   'routeClass' => 'ProfileRoute',
   'pass' => array('userName')
   )
   );
   

2. 2. Now create a file named profile_route...