 <p>I always add the following init-method to my bootstrap to pass the configuration into the registry.</p> <pre><code>protected function _initConfig() { $config = new Zend_Config($this-&gt;getOptions(), true); Zend_Registry::set('config', $config); return $config; } </code></pre> <p>This will shorten your code a little bit:</p> <pre><code>class My_UserController extends Zend_Controller_Action { public function indexAction() { $manager = new My_Model_Manager(Zend_Registry::get('config')-&gt;my); $this-&gt;view-&gt;items = $manager-&gt;getItems(); } } </code></pre>