Detect model/URL change for Ember Route - ember.js

My EmberJS application has a ProjectRoute (/project/:project_id) and a corresponding ProjectController. When viewing a particular project, users can edit its properties, and I'd like the project to automatically be saved when the user stops looking at it.
Currently, what I'm doing is something like this:
Application.ProjectRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
...
exit: function() {
this.get('controller').saveProject();
}
...
});
This works when the user simply closest the project view. However, if the user simply switches to viewing a different project (e.g. goes directly from /project/1 to /project/2), the same route is used (it just uses a different model), and exit is not called.
What I need is a way to detect this transition and call the saveProject function before it happens. Any ideas?

I "solved" it by adding the following to my controller:
Application.ProjectController = Ember.ObjectController.extend({
...
saveOnChange: function() {
var previousProject = this.get('target.projectToSave');
if (previousProject && previousProject.get('isDirty')) {
Application.store.commit();
}
this.set('target.projectToSave', this.get('content'));
}.observes('content')
...
});
This seems to work well. Note that I'm storing the projectToSave property in the route (target) as opposed to the controller, because the controller gets wiped every time the model changes. It feels a little weird/hacky to store this in the route, but the only alternative I could think of was to store it in ApplicationController, which seemed overly broad.

Related

Ember2.8 : Refresh absolutely everything on transitionToRoute('/route')

So I currently have a card game that when finished loads up a modal with a button to transition back to the home route. This is the action that is called when the modal's close button is clicked.
goBackHome() {
this.transitionToRoute('/games');
},
It does redirect to the requested route, but all the changes to back-end data I did still remain. I've also tried passing it the model itself
goBackHome() {
this.transitionToRoute('games');
},
Basically, it doesn't do a hard refresh of everything. What I would like is when transitionToRoute is called to reload the route as if I was inputting the exact URL into the browser myself.
Well I try to write possible way to do this, hope you can pick one and solve your problem.
you need to add this.refresh(); to either your method or in model() to force reload the model to get new data (depends on what you need)! if you want to reload the location the whole windows I mean just add location.reload();
one example should be
model(id){
var post = this.get('store').find('post', id); // Find the post from the store
post.reload(); // Force a reload
return post; // Return the fetched post NOW and the information will be updated.
}
Moreover, you can do something else in your model() look at the example :
model(params) {
return this.store.findRecord('whatever', params.id, { reload: true });
}
this { reload: true } enforces the model to get fresh data, it can be implemented with findAll as well.
ref: At the moment I'm just using the afterModel hook to force a reload, but it would be good to get the reload flag working again.
so, you can do also another way which is you can send a param to the function and get that in route and in route actions you can have this.referesh()! to reload the model. In this case, you need to add this.sendAction('actionName'); and in route actionName(){this.referesh();}

Ember 'currentUser' Model/Controller Setup

Ok, so here's what I'm trying to accomplish (in ember.js):
New model/controller to manage the current user and session information
The model needs to be available everywhere so I can just do something like currentUser.firstname (for instance, in the nav)
After lots and lots of research, it seems that setting up a separate controller/model is the best way to go. I tried doing everything in the application controller, but then I need to implicitly set the user model (somehow?) on that controller, which doesn't seem like a good idea (what if I need to do other things in the application controller?).
So here's what I've tried:
controllers/session.js
init: function() {
// this never gets called unless I call the setCurrentUser
// function from another controller using 'needs' or something
},
setCurrentUser: function() {
// you can ignore the authData.uid variable - it's something used
// by firebase, but not important for this example. Just assume I'm
// requesting and getting a user back.
this.store.find('user').then(function(users) {
this.set('currentUser', users.filterBy('uid', authData.uid)[0])
}
}
models/session.js
DS.Model.extend({
currentUser: DS.belongsTo('user')
});
I don't have a route or view/template associated with this model/controller because it really wouldn't make sense (the user doesn't need to see a page all about him/herself).
So I tried calling setCurrentUser from the application controller by doing something like this.get('setCurrentUser')() (which looks very weird - there's got to be a better way, but I think the answer may be not calling this from the application controller and initializing the controller in a different way?).
I would love some advice on how I can get this working. Sorry that I'm trying to develop and explain the architecture of the app all at the same time, so it is a bit messy - please let me know if anything is unclear.
Thanks for the help!

Ember.js route hook to be called on every transition

Is there a route hook in Ember.js that is called on every transition, even if the new route is the same as the old route (for example, clicking a top-level navigation link to the same route).
I tried activate, but it's only being called once, and is not being called again when I use the top-level navigation to go to the same route I'm already in.
Example jsFiddle: When I click "Test" the first time, the activate hook is called, but when I click it a second time, it does not.
You can setup a didTransition in the router, exactly how Ember does it for Google Analytics.
App.Router.reopen({
doSomething: function() {
// do something here
return;
}.on('didTransition')
});
See example here: http://emberjs.com/guides/cookbook/helpers_and_components/adding_google_analytics_tracking/
UPDATE: (new link since old is broken)
https://guides.emberjs.com/v1.10.0/cookbook/helpers_and_components/adding_google_analytics_tracking/
Activate is not being called a second time because This hook is executed when the router enters the route... And when you click on that link-to a second time, the router isn't doing anything... As in, no transition is being made (although it is "attempted").
http://emberjs.com/api/classes/Ember.Route.html#method_activate
The method that I have found to work best is observing the currentPath from within a controller. I use this for animations between routes.
In your application controller you can do something like the following:
currentPathChange: function () {
switch(this.get('currentPath')){
case 'test.index':
this.doSomething();
break;
case 'test.new':
this.doSomethingElse();
break;
}
}.observes('currentPath')
You should be able to access almost any part of your app from the application controller, so it's a nice "root hook," I suppose.
Example: http://jsfiddle.net/mattblancarte/jxWjh/2/
Did you already consider the hook willTransition?
http://emberjs.com/guides/routing/preventing-and-retrying-transitions/
App.SomeRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
actions: {
willTransition: function(transition) {
// do your stuff
}
}
});
Alter/Hack EmberJS code and add a jQuery event trigger inside the doTransition() Function. This is Best but kind of defeating the point.
As of today, 1 year later and Ember 2.0 kind of out, there is NO OTHER WAY :(
Ember does not provide a way to track route-change attempts! This includes URLattemts(history), link-to attempts, hash change attempts etc..

Nested routes: handling failed child find in error action loses parent context

I've recently been porting a number of Ember apps I maintain to RC 8 and ran into this.
Before the router facelift landed I would sometimes manage control flow via promises returned by Ember Data find calls.
For example:
SomeRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
model: function(params) {
var resolve = function(model) { return model; };
var route = this;
var reject = function() { this.transitionTo('someOtherRoute'); };
return SomeModel.find(params.some_model_id).then(resolve, reject);
}
...
});
With the recent changes, it is now possible to handle errors created in model callbacks via the error action:
SomeRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
// note: model callback no longer needed--default suffices
actions: {
error: function(reason, transition) {
// check the reason object to determine how/if to handle this error
this.transitionTo('someOtherRoute');
}
}
...
});
I much prefer the latter approach as it makes the code easier to read and better separates concerns.
This works well in most cases but I encountered an issue in an app that uses nested routes. I've included a simplified example followed by a jsbin that demonstrates the issue.
Lets say we want to show Articles that belong to Authors and the URLs look like: /authors/:author_slug/articles/:article_slug. We want to redirect to a Not Found page when someone tries to view an article that doesn't exist.
When managing control flow in the model callback as above, you can browse to /authors/some_author/articles/some_invalid_slug and be redirected to /authors/some_author/articles/not_found as expected.
However, if the redirect to the Not Found page is instead managed via the error action, the parent context is lost at some point and you end up at /authors/undefined/articles/not_found.
You can see this in the following jsbins:
http://jsbin.com/eJOXifo/1#/authors/schneier/articles/12345
(redirects to http://jsbin.com/eJOXifo/1#/authors/schneier/articles/not_found)
http://jsbin.com/oNaWelo/1#/authors/schneier/articles/12345
(redirects to http://jsbin.com/oNaWelo/1#/authors/undefined/articles/not_found)
Does anyone know why this happens or how to avoid it?
Notes:
I know this doesn't have anything to do with Ember Data. However, implementing something equivalent without Ember Data just makes the example more complicated without adding anything
There are a few small hacks to make Ember Data work as expected in jsbin:
I'm preloading the parent model to avoid having to load it from anywhere.
I'm not doing anything special to provide data for the child model. The app just makes a request to http://jsbin.com/articles/12345. This actually returns a 200 but bombs anyway because the response is html. An API that correctly returns a 404 response gives the same behvaiour.
I remember a while ago reading about some service that could be used to build fake API responses for use with services like jsfiddle or jsbin. If anyone knows what it is please comment.
Your right that the parent context is getting lost. The trick is to extract that context from the transition and pass it as an argument when calling transitionTo. So:
App.ArticlesArticleRoute = Em.Route.extend({
actions: {
error: function(reason, transition) {
console.log('in error handler');
this.transitionTo('articles.notFound', transition.resolvedModels.authors);
}
}
});
With this change, visiting the url:
http://jsbin.com/iVOYEvA/2#/authors/schneier/articles/my-fake-article
will redirect to:
http://jsbin.com/iVOYEvA/2#/authors/schneier/articles/not_found

Is it possible to hide substates from showing up in the URL when using the Ember Router v2?

I would like to have a route substate not show up in the URL, but still be able to take advantage of having a route class on which I can define renderTemplate, model, setupController, etc. hooks. Is this possible with the v2 router? I am using Ember release candidate 2.
Here's an example.
Suppose I have the routes:
/exercise/:exercise_id
/exercise/:exercise_id/correct
/exercise/:exercise_id/incorrect
I would like all of these to show up in the URL as:
/exercise/:exercise_id
As I don't want the student to just directly type in /correct onto the end of the ULR and get to the correct answer. And although I have a way to prevent that from working, the full route still shows up in the URL. From the student's perspective, I only want them to think about the state as /exercise/:exercise_id.
Of course I could just store the state correct vs. incorrect in some controller variable, but then I loose the convenience of having route classes, ExerciseCorrectRoute and ExerciseIncorrectRoute, which I want to behave differently, and so the hooks, like renderTemplate and setupController, are nice to have defined cleanly in separate places.
Thoughts?
Kevin
UPDATE:
I went with Dan Gebhardt's suggestion because I like to keep things as much as possible within the framework's considered design cases, as this seems to reduce headaches given Ember is still evolving. Also I didn't get a chance to try out inDream's hack.
Although I still think it would be nice if the router added a feature to mask substates from the URL.
Every route must be associated with a URL for Ember's current router.
Instead of using multiple routes, I'd recommend that you use conditionals in your exercise template to call the appropriate {{render}} based on the state of the exercise. In this way you can still maintain separate templates and controllers for each state.
You can reference to my answer in Ember.js - Prevent re-render when switching route.
Reopen the location API you're using and set window.suppressUpdateURL to true if you want to handle the state manually.
Ember.HistoryLocation:
Ember.HistoryLocation.reopen({
onUpdateURL: function(callback) {
var guid = Ember.guidFor(this),
self = this;
Ember.$(window).bind('popstate.ember-location-'+guid, function(e) {
if(window.suppressUpdateURL)return;
// Ignore initial page load popstate event in Chrome
if(!popstateFired) {
popstateFired = true;
if (self.getURL() === self._initialUrl) { return; }
}
callback(self.getURL());
});
}
});
Ember.HashLocation:
Ember.HashLocation.reopen({
onUpdateURL: function(callback) {
var self = this;
var guid = Ember.guidFor(this);
Ember.$(window).bind('hashchange.ember-location-'+guid, function() {
if(window.suppressUpdateURL)return;
Ember.run(function() {
var path = location.hash.substr(1);
if (get(self, 'lastSetURL') === path) { return; }
set(self, 'lastSetURL', null);
callback(path);
});
});
}
});