redirect root url according to locale in Zend - url

Question

Working in ZF: Is it possible to change the base or root url on the www.example.com to www.example.com/$language/home, thus depending on the (browser) locale of the users browser?
Example; If a guest manually types www.example.com I would like to change the url automatically to a url with locale: www.example.com/en/home for guests in en_GB region or www.example.fr/home for guests in fr_FR region.
From the root-url I have all the menu-urls and content locale aware. Clicking a link to a menu item in the url the lang is automatically added after the root. The content on the root url is locale aware too using translate, so english for en_GB en french for fr_FR, etc.
Still missing though I would like to have the root url change to locale aware right from the start of the visit to the application if only the root is entered.
I guess something like
root :to => redirect("/prepayments")
in Rails 3 from what I understand from this Q&A on this forum
I have tried and implemented controller action helpers, redirects, etc. etc. for as far as I could find on this forum, but they all don't offer the solution.
A redirect in htaccess is not possible I think since I first need to get the locale from the browser. Since I don't know this the redirect is dynamic and I cannot set a redirect in htaccess.
I woud appreciate any suggestions?

Answer 1

Since I don't know what version of Zend you're using I am posting this for Zend 1.1x. One thing you could do is "catch" the request before it is dispatched, get the Accept-Language header and based on the user's preferences there set the locale or redirect the user to a URL you like. One way to do this is in the FrontController's preDispatch() method.
Keep in mind that:
You will need to check if all browsers send this through
This header string must be parsed careful
Because of the way it is defined:
Accept-Language en,bg;q=0.7,en-us;q=0.3
Also users may and often do set language preferences to a foreign language so this header on its own may not be enough.
The best way to do this in a OOP way is to wrap this functionality in a ZendPlugin.
Attach it in your bootstrap:
protected function _initLocaleHandlerControllerPlugin() {
$frontController = Zend_Controller_Front::getInstance();
$plugin = new App_Controller_Plugin_LocaleHandler();
$frontController->registerPlugin($plugin);
}
Now in this plugin redefine the preDispatch() callback:
public function preDispatch(Zend_Controller_Request_Http $request) {
$acceptLang = $request->getHeader('Accept-Language');
//Parse string and get language
//After parsing set the appropriate locale in `Zend_Locale`
//redirect the user/dispatch the request?
//THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE:
$request->setModuleName('home')
->setControllerName('registration')
->setDispatched(true);
}
Zend 1.x doesn't seem to have a built in class for this, Zend 2 does have the "Zend\Http\Header\AcceptLanguage" class.

Answer 2

I finally found the next solution on my question with a little help from Florent in Zend Framework: Redirect from action helper:
In my Language Plugin I added
public function routeShutdown(Zend_Controller_Request_Abstract $request)
{...some code handling translate...
$url = $request->getRequestUri();
if ($url === '/') {
$redirector = Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::getStaticHelper('Redirector');
$redirector->gotoUrl($lang.'/home');
}
The routes I have them in a routes.ini so $lang.'/home' is routed to the indexController and indexAction of the Default module.