Emberjs: Access controller dependency on a different namespace - ember.js

Question

In my ember application I want to have modules on different namespaces. I have an App Namespace and for each module there is an App.ModuleName namespace.
So far so good, I can access everything so far using App/ModuleName/SomeResource syntax. Now I have a controller that has a dependency on a controller in one of the module namespaces. I put up the controllers like this:
App.ModuleName.FooController = Ember.Controller.extend({
fooVal: 42
});
App.SomeController = Ember.Controller.extend({
needs: ['App/ModuleName/Foo', 'bar']
});
That seem to work so far telling by ember not complaining that the needed controller doesn't exist.
Now, how do I acces the controller in my handlebars template? For the bar controller its easy, just using controllers.bar.someProperty but I cannot access the App.ModuleName.FooController. I tried:
{{controllers.App/ModuleName/Foo.fooVal}}
{{controllers.App.ModuleName.Foo.fooVal}}
{{controllers.Foo.fooVal}}
and so on, every combination I could think of but it didn't work. Is it possible (and how) to get this running? Can someone please enlighten me?
And by the way: Even on the controllers I use needs successfully, if I debug them (logging them into the console, from my code directly or with a handlebars helper) the controllers property is always undefined. Is there a way to check the needed controller references?
Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

To my knowledge, Ember's Container looks up stuff via the resolver. And it only looks for stuff on the application's namespace.
Some examples from the DefaultResolver docs.
'controller:post' //=> App.PostController
'controller:posts.index' //=> App.PostsIndexController
'controller:blog/post' //=> Blog.PostController
'controller:basic' //=> Ember.Controller
To achieve what you need you will need to provide a custom Resolver that looks up stuff in the different namespace when creating the Application.
App = Ember.Application.create({
resolver: MyNewResolver
});

Answer 2

For everyone who is interested in how I solved the issue and what I tried and learned:
I did some diggin in the code and tried a few things. I got the desired output using
a) A custom Handlebars helper that returns the property of the controller like this:
{{ myhelper 'App.ModuleName.FooController' 'fooVal'}}
with the following (quick and dirty) helper:
Ember.Handlebars.registerBoundHelper('myhelper', function(arg1, arg2, opts) {
if (opts && opts['data']) {
var ctrl = opts.data.properties[0];
var prop = opts.data.properties[1];
var controller = this.get('container').lookup('controller:' + ctrl.split('.').join('/'));
if (controller) {
return controller.get(prop);
}
}
});
The problem with this is, I couldn't get databinding to work, so if I changed my underlying model, the view didn't update.
b) Overriding the Controllers init() method to get the controller instance like this:
init: function() {
this.module = this.get('container').lookup('controller:App/Module/Foo');
}
and then in the template:
{{module.fooVal}}
In the second way, also Databinding worked, but It didn`t feel correct, so I did some googlin and came across this post on the emberjs issue list:
https://github.com/emberjs/ember.js/issues/683#issuecomment-5122333
As stated by tomdale, nested namespaces are not really something that is encouraged in ember, but multiple 'toplevel' namespaces are ok. So I decided to put up a toplevel namespace for every module and use a custom resolver to resolve them. Works like a charm now and feels like the right way to do it.
Any additional suggestions and comments about the pro's and con's of my second and final way of solving the problem would be much appreciated.