Executing a function before view renders

I'm new to Zend Framework MVC. I love a lot of things about working with an MVC environment, but find myself confused about it structurally sometimes.

I have a simple task, I'd like to flag certain users on our site to track their movements. For this I've set up a simple table in the database, and started to code in my _initTracking() function into the bootstrap. I then realized I was approaching this from the wrong direction - I'd like this to be one of the last functions that fires, to avoid mucking up my tracking entries with header redirects, an开发者_开发百科d to ensure all autoloaded classes are present. How do I do this? Is there an "onBeforeRender" type of function? If there is I couldn't find it.

Thanks

I would suggest using a ZF plugin. You could track user's actions in plugin's postDispatch() or dispatchLoopShutdown() method, depending on how granular your tracking needs to be.

Some reading about ZF plugins - http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.controller.plugins.html

Also a really neat article about request lifecycle in Zend Framework - http://www.eschrade.com/page/zend-framework-request-lifecycle-4b9a4288.

Ended up putting this in the layout scripts. There's probably a better way of doing this, but in my case (having all views I wanted the code to run in under 2 layouts) it was the easiest, and accomplished my goal.

I think the best place for this would be in a postDispatch() hook in your controller.

Have a look at http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.controller.action.html, specifically the section on Pre- and Post-Dispatch Hooks.

This would suit placing your tracking code in a base controller - which your action controllers would extend, keeping the tracking code in one location.