Zend Framework website.com/username - zend-framework

Question

One of the application I am developing using Zend Framework requires the user's profile page to be accessed via website.com/username, while other pages should be accessed by website.com/controller_name/action_name
I am not too sure how can this be achieved, however, I feel this can be done with some tweaks in the .htaccess file.
Can someone here please help me out?
Many thanks in advance

Answer 1

As suggested before, you can use a custom route that will route single level requests. However, this will also override the default route. If you're using modules, this will no longer work example.com/<module>.
I have done this before but only for static pages. I wanted this:
example.com/about
instead of this:
example.com/<some-id>/about
while maintaining the default route so this still works
example.com/<module>
example.com/<controller>
The way I did this was using a plugin to test if my request could be dispatched. If the request could not be dispatched using the default route, then I would change the request to the proper module to load my page. Here is a sample plugin:
class My_Controller_Plugin_UsernameRoute extends Zend_Controller_Plugin_Abstract
{
public function preDispatch(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request)
{
$dispatcher = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance()->getDispatcher();
if (!$dispatcher->isDispatchable($request)) {
$username = $request->getControllerName();
$request->setModuleName('users');
$request->setControllerName('dashboard');
$request->setActionName('index');
$request->setParam('username', $username);
/** Prevents infinite loop if you make a mistake in the new request **/
if ($dispatcher->isDispatchable($request)) {
$request->setDispatched(false);
}
}
}
}

Answer 2

What about using Zend_Controller_Router_Route, look here the link http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.controller.router.html#zend.controller.router.routes.standard.variable-requirements