Routing a subdomain in CakePHP with HTML-Helper

I have a mobile page running on a subdomain "m.mydomain.com". This is all working fine, but I would like to remove the controller in the URL when using the subdomain.

m.mydomain.com/mobiles/tips

should become

m.mydomain.com/tips

by using the HTML-Helper.

At the moment a link looks like that:

$html->link('MyLink', array('controller' => 'mobiles', 'action'=> 'tips'));

I tried several possible solutions with the routes and also some hacks in the bootstrap but it did not work out for me.

In the CakeBakery I found this but that does not solve my issue.

Does anyone have an idea for this issue?

Gathering code from the page you mentioned:

Constraint: you cannot have a controller called tips or foo in this setup

In /config/routes.php:

$subdomain = substr( env("HTTP_HOST"), 0, strpos(env("HTTP_HOST"), ".") );

if( strlen($subdomain)>0 && $subdomain != "m" ) { 
    Router::connect('/tips',array('controller'=>'mobiles','action'=>'tips'));
    Router::connect('/foo', array('controller'=>'mobiles','action'=>'foo'));
    Configure::write('Site.type', 'mobile');
}

/* The following is available via default routes '/{:controller}/{:action}'*/
// Router::connect('/mobiles/tips', 
//                  array('controller' => 'mobiles', 'action'=>'tips'));
// Router::connect('/mobiles/foo',  
//                  array('controller' => 'mobiles', 'action'=>'foo'));

In your Controller action:

$site_is_mobile = Configure::read('Site.type') ?: '';

Then in your view:

<?php

if ( $site_is_mobile ) {
    // $html will take care of the 'm.example.com' part
    $html->link('Cool Tips', '/tips');
    $html->link('Hot Foo', '/foo');
} else {
    // $html will just output 'www.example.com' in this case
    $html->link('Cool Tips', '/mobiles/tips');
    $html->link('Hot Foo', '/mobiles/foo');
}

?>

This will allow you to output the right links in your views (in a bit I'll show you how to write even less code) but the $html helper will not be able -- by no amount of magic -- to use controller-action routes to another domain. Be aware that m.example.com and www.example.com are different domains as far as the $html helper is concerned.

Now, if you want you can do the following in your controller to take some logic off your view:

<?php

$site_is_mobile = Configure::read('Site.type') ?: '';

if ( $site_is_mobile !== '' ) {
    $tips_url = '/tips';
    $foo_url  = '/foo';
} else {
    $tips_url = '/mobile/tips';
    $foo_url  = '/mobile/foo';
}

// make "urls" available to the View
$this->set($tips_url);
$this->set($foo_url);

?>

And in your view you don't need to worry about checking whether the site is being accessed via m.example.com/tips or www.example.com/mobile/tips:

<?php echo $html->link("Get some kewl tips", $tips_url); ?>

For more advanced routing in CakePHP-1.3 refer to Mark Story's article on custom Route classes

Let us know ;)