CakePhp Router:connect, I don't get the syntax - cakephp

Question

I am trying to connect the next urls:
1) /food/tips
2) /happiness/tips/best_tips
To the following objects:
1) controller=tips / action=index / passed_parameters=food
2) controller=tips / action=index / passed_parameters=(happiness,best_tips)
--edit--
These routes are not fixed.
Meaning: what I try to do is to route every url that have tips as action, to the tips controller, to any fixed(index is good enough) action, and chaining the rest of the url as it was in the original call.
Something like /any_controller/tips/any_param to /tips/index/any_params
-- end edit --
Hope that now there is some sense.
How should it be done?
(please - also explain)
Thanks

Answer 1

the routing is all done through the call Router::connect('thing to catch', 'where to send it');
so it can be as simple as:
Router::connect('/food/tips', '/tips/index/food');
or the preferred method (using cakes built in url builder)
Router::connect('/food/tips/*', array('controller' => 'tips', 'action' => 'index', 'food');
The first method takes a string argument and passes it to another string which would be a url and you would then have to catch it in your controller, and expect a passed parameter through the url.
The second method uses cakes built in url former which takes an array with keys controller and action (there are other options: http://api.cakephp.org/class/router#method-Routerurl)
The second is preferred due to proper formatting and future flexibility (I believe).
any passed parameters in the second method are just passed as un-named items in the array. named parameters are just passed as keyed elements. So if I wanted to create a URL like this
/posts/index/find:all/page:2
I would write the url like this:
Router::connect('/url_to_catch', array('controller' => 'posts', 'action' => 'index', 'find' => 'all', 'page' => 2);
So just to finish up, I would actually pass your parameter through as named:
Router::connect('/happiness/tips/best_tips', array('controller' => 'tips', 'action' => 'index', 'items' => array('happiness', 'best_tips'));
which would need a function in your tips controller that looks like this:
function tips(){ $this->passedArgs['items']; }

Answer 2

I would recommend reading the chapter on Routing the the book, as it will explain things better than I can and it seems counter productive to paste it here.
http://book.cakephp.org/#!/view/948/Defining-Routes
For the sake of explanation I will try,
Router::connect('/food/tips', array('controller' => 'tips', 'action' => 'index', 'food'));
Router::connect('/happiness/tips/best_tips', array('controller' => 'tips', 'action' => 'index', 'happiness','best_tips'));
This should get things working for you. What you are essentially doing is telling the Cake Routing what url you want it to capture, as it will be doing this using Regex. Then you want to tell it which code you want it to run. So this takes a Controller and Action pair, as a set of things to do.
You also want to pass through your named paremeters afterwards. These will tack onto the function in your controller so that you can do stuff with them.

Answer 3

It's quite easy, just check the Router configuration in the manual. You have to use the connect method from the Router class. This accepts 2 parameters. First your desired routed (e.g. food/tips) and second an array with the actual path it should follow. So for your examples you'd do something like this:
Router::connect('/food/tips', array('controller' => 'tips', 'action' => 'index', 'food');
Router::connect('/happiness/tips/best_tips', array('controller' => 'tips', 'action' => 'index', 'happiness', 'best_tips');
This is equivalent to calling TipsController->index('food') and TipsController('happiness', 'best_tips) respectively.
However, your routes look a bit funny. The Cake convention for routes is /controller/action/param1/param2/etc where the parameters param1 etc. are optional and the index action is assumed when no other action is given.
You're taking a different approach and I would suggest (if you can) change it to the Cake conventional routes, as this will save you a lot of work later on because Cake will automatically connect these routes to the desired methods.
So my suggestion is going for tips/food and tips/happiness/best_tips instead of the routes you suggest. This way, you don't have to do any router configuration.
UPDATE
After you're edit, I think it's best to try something with defining custom routes. I can't test this for you at the moment, so you should do some testing yourself, but in that case it would be something like:
Router::connect('/:section/tips/:param',
array('action' => 'index'),
array(
'section' => '[a-z]*',
'param' => '[a-z]*'
)
);
UPDATE2
Sorry, I've tested the above and it doesn't seem to work.