CMS Routing in MVC

Solution 1:

Instead of simply using explode() to separate the segments of URL, you could use a set of regular expression pattern.

For example, this following patter would try to match at firsts action, and, if action exists them check if there is controller set before it:

'/(:?(:?\/(?P<controller>[^\/\.,;?\n]+))?\/(?P<action>[^\/\.,;?\n]+))?/'

Most of PHP frameworks use different ways to generate such patterns, with simplified notations. This way you can set which parts for each pattern are mandatory and which optional. And it is also possible to provide fallback values for the optional parts.

That said ...

Before starting to make something so complicated as cms with framework, you might invest some additional time in researching OOP. I would recommend to at least watch lectures from Miško Hevery and Robert C. Martin. Just because you think, that you know how to write a class, does not mean, that you understands object oriented programming.

Update

I have listed few materials in this answer. You might find them useful,

Additionally here are two more lectures, that were not in answer above:

• Clean Code I: Arguments
• Clean Code III: Functions

Solution 2:

My understanding is that there's three routing cases:

The basic one:

/<controller>/<action>/<parameters>    

A special one for the admin panel (where "admin" would be a kind of separate module):

/<module>/<controller>/<action>/<parameters>

And finally a special case for "/projects" which maps to "/front/projects".

In that case, you need to make your routing class more flexible so that it can handle any kind of routing scheme. In a framework like Kohana, this would be done with rules such as:

Route::set('adminModule', 'admin/projects')
    ->defaults(array(
        'controller' => 'projects',
        'action'     => 'admin',
    ));

Route::set('projectPage', 'projects')
    ->defaults(array(
        'controller' => 'front',
        'action'     => 'projects',
    ));

Route::set('default', '(<controller>(/<id>(/<action>)))')
    ->defaults(array(
        'controller' => 'index',
        'action'     => 'index',
    ));

Obviously this is just an example but you get the idea. Basically, you want to provide some sensible default routing (eg. controller/action/id) but you also need to allow users to configure other routes.