Apparently custom prefixes and custom named arguments in URLs don’t mix all that well in good ol’ CakePHP. I’ve got a StatisticsController with some custom_-prefixed actions. So, in routes.php I added this line to parse the URLs:

Router::connect('/statistics/custom/:action/*', array('prefix' => 'custom', 'controller' => 'statistics', 'custom' => true));

Straightforward enough, right? And to generate a link with the $html helper, you just need to do pass the prefix as true, like so:

$html->link('Go here', array('controller' => 'statistics', 'action' => 'view', 'custom' => true));

That’ll generate your /statistics/custom/view link. But if you try to pass a custom named argument, for example:

$html->link('Go here', array('controller' => 'statistics', 'action' => 'view', 'custom' => true, 'Paginate' => 25));

You might think (hope?) that the generated link would be /statistics/custom/view/Paginate:25… but no. Thanks to the presence of the named Paginate argument, the code also interprets ‘custom’ as a named argument, resulting in the URL /statistics/custom_view/custom:1/Paginate:25/. So, it spits out the full method and also takes on a ‘custom’ named argument. Not what we want…

To solve this issue, you’ll need to define each and every named argument you intend to pass in your application at the top of your app/config/routes.php, like this:

Router::connectNamed(array('Paginate', 'page'));

Throw that line in your route file before any Router::connect() rules and your custom prefixes and named arguments will get along swimmingly. CakePHP will know to separate those named arguments from your custom prefixes, so you’ll get the /statistics/custom/view/Paginate::25 URL.