Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Chain is a route which allows to chain multiple routes together. This allows you to chain hostname-routes and path routes, or multiple path routes for example. Chaining can be done either programatically or within a configuration file. When chaining routes together, the parameters of the outer route have a higher priority than the parameters of the inner route. Thus if you define a controller in the outer and in the inner route, the controller of the outer route will be selected. When chaining programatically, there are two ways to achieve this. The first one is to create a new Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Chain instance and then calling the chain() method multiple times with all routes which should be chained together. The other way is to take the first route, e.g. a hostname route, and calling the chain() method on it with the route which should be appended to it. This will not modify the hostname route, but return a new instance of Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Chain, which then has both routes chained together: chain($hostnameRoute) ->chain($pathRoute); // Second way, chain them directly $chainedRoute = $hostnameRoute->chain($pathRoute); ]]> When chaining routes together, their separator is a slash by default. There may be cases when you want to have a different separator: chain($secondRoute, '-'); // Assemble the route: "foo-bar" echo $chainedRoute->assemble(); ]]> To chain routes together in a config file, there are additional parameters for the configuration of those. The simpler approach is to use the chains parameters. This one is simply a list of routes, which will be chained with the parent route. Neither the parent- nor the child-route will be added directly to the router but only the resulting chained route. The name of the chained route in the router will be the parent route name and the child route name concatenated with a dash (-) by default. A simple config in XML would look like this: www.example.com :language imprint users.example.com :username misc ]]> This will result in the three routes www-language-index, www-language-imprint and users-language-profile which will only match based on the hostname and the route misc, which will match with any hostname. The alternative way of creating a chained route is via the chain parameter, which can only be used with the chain-route type directly, and also just works in the root level: www.example.com :language imprint www, language, index www, language, imprint ]]> You can also give the chain parameter as array instead of separating the routes with a comma: www language index www language imprint ]]> When you configure chain routes with Zend_Config and want the chain name separator to be different from a dash, you need to specify this separator separately: array( 'type' => 'Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Static', 'route' => 'foo', 'chains' => array( 'subRouteName' => array( 'type' => 'Zend_Controller_Router_Route_Static', 'route' => 'bar', 'defaults' => array( 'module' => 'module', 'controller' => 'controller', 'action' => 'action' ) ) ) ) )); // Set separator before adding config $router->setChainNameSeparator('_separator_') // Add config $router->addConfig($config); // The name of our route now is: chainName_separator_subRouteName echo $this->_router->assemble(array(), 'chainName_separator_subRouteName'); // The proof: it echoes /foo/bar ]]>