How can I set a link to route with a dynamic segment - ember.js

How can I set a link to route with a dynamic segment. According to guide I start with this
window.App = Ember.Application.create()
App.Router.map ->
#resource 'products'
#resource 'product', path: '/product/:product_id'
in my template:
{{#linkTo "product.1"}}products{{/linkTo}}
Unfortunately this gives me the follwing error:
Uncaught Error: assertion failed: The attempt to linkTo route 'product.1' failed.
The router did not find 'product.1' in its possible routes: 'products', 'product', 'index'

{{linkTo}} expects the route defined in the Router.map, so in according to your mapping it should be simply product.
As for the dynamic segment, you also have to pass an object which will be serialized in the ProductRoute. The serialization in almost all scenarios occur without the developer having to do anything since Ember relies on conventions. In rare cases, one must implement serialize a little differently, but for most cases you don't have to touch it.
If you're using {{linkTo}} inside an {{each}} loop you can do it like this:
{{#each product in controller}}
{{#linkTo product product}}Details{{/linkTo}}
{{/each}}
or
{{#each controller}}
{{#linkTo product this}}Details{{/linkTo}}
{{/each}}
Where the first argument is the route name and the second is your model object. In the first code the object has been also named as product, while in the second it's simply being passed as this, which is the product of the iteration.
If you have an unusual scenario where you have to link to a dynamic route while not using the {{each}} loop, you have to expose the object in the controller (preferred) or view. Then you'd have to do something similar to the following:
App.SomeController = Em.Controller.extend
product: null
App.SomeRoute = Em.Route.extend
###
controller is actually `SomeController` here
model is not being used, and is null, while the actual model being
supplied to the controller is `product`, retrieved from store
###
setupController: (controller, model) ->
product = App.Product.find 1
controller.set 'product', product
return
While your template would be similar to this:
{{#linkTo product controller.product}}Product{{/linkTo}}
How does the route know the id?
Conventions. The route will serialize the object you pass, and expose an object with a single property, which has the name of the model for that route, followed be "_id", which in this case would be product_id, so when you click that link, the app activates the ProductRoute, runs the serialize method creating that id property, which will subsequently be used as the argument of the model hook. That's where you call find passing params.product_id as argument. Then the model returns a promise of that model which will be used by the setupController, exposing the object to the view layer as controller.content or simply controller.

Related

Add additional model to model hook triggered from link-to

I'm happy that multiple models can be loaded into a route using something like this (although feel free to correct if there's a better way!):
model: function() {
var self = this;
return Ember.RSVP.hash({
foos: self.store.find('foos'),
bars: self.store.find('bars'),
});
However, if the model hook is set by a model being passed by, for example, a link-to helper, how should I add the additional model?
Thanks!
EDIT
So in my case I have a unit and objective, which are related. A unit can have many objectives - although its a one way relationship.
In my units route, I click on a unit which links-to units/unit:ID route. So the unit is set as the model, but I also want all objectives loaded into the model, so that I can select and add these to the unit.
Not everything in your page must be in the route's model. For example, you may have a Route that contains a Unit object. To get a list of all Objective objects, you could add a simple property to your controller:
allObjectives: function() {
return this.store.find('objective');
}.property()
Your template could then render the model as usual:
<div>Unit name: {{model.name}}</div>
<div>All objectives:
<ul>
{{#each objective in allObjectives}}
<li>{{objective.name}}</li>
{{/each}}
</ul>

How to use itemControllerClass to achieve a singleton like experience with ember.js

I've got a fairly simple form but it should never carry any state with it. I started reading an older discussion about how you can use itemControllerClass to get a "singleton" class created each time you enter the route.
If I want to use this how would I plug this into the template and wire it up from the parent controller?
Here is what I'm guessing you would do from the javascript side
App.FooController = Ember.Controller.extend({
itemControllerClass: 'someclass_name'
});
The only "must have" is that I need to have access to the parent route params from the child singleton controller.
Any guidance would be excellent -thank you in advance!
Update
Just to be clear about my use case -this is not an ArrayController. I actually just have a Controller (as shown above). I don't need to proxy a model or Array of models. I'm looking for a way to point at a url (with a few params) and generate a new instance when the route is loaded (or the parent controller is shown).
I'm doing this because the template is a simple "blank form" that doesn't and shouldn't carry state with it. when the user saves the form and I transition to the index route everything that happened in that form can die with it (as I've cached the data in ember-data or finished my $.ajax / etc)
Anyone know how to accomplish this stateless behavior with a controller?
I'm betting you're talking about this discussion. It's one of my personal favorite discoveries related to Ember. The outcome of it was the itemController property of an ArrayController; I use it all the time. The basic gist of it is, when you're iterating over an array controller, you can change the backing controller within the loop. So, each iterating of the loop, it will provide a new controller of the type you specify. You can specify the itemController as either a property on the ArrayController, or as an option on the {{#each}} handlebars helper. So, you could do it like this:
App.FooController = Ember.ArrayController.extend({
itemController: 'someclass'
});
App.SomeclassController = Ember.ObjectController.extend({});
Or, like this:
{{#each something in controller itemController='someclass'}}
...
{{/each}}
Within the itemController, you can access the parent controller (FooController, in this case), like:
this.get('parentController');
Or, you can specify the dependency using needs, like you ordinarily would in a controller. So, as long as the params are available to the parentController, you should be able to access them on the child controller as well.
Update
After hearing more about the use case, where a controller's state needs to reset every time a transition happens to a particular route, It sounds like the right approach is to have a backing model for the controller. Then, you can create a new instance of the model on one of the route's hooks; likely either model or setupController.
From http://emberjs.com/api/classes/Ember.ArrayController.html
Sometimes you want to display computed properties within the body of an #each helper that depend on the underlying items in content, but are not present on those items. To do this, set itemController to the name of a controller (probably an ObjectController) that will wrap each individual item.
For example:
{{#each post in controller}}
<li>{{title}} ({{titleLength}} characters)</li>
{{/each}}
App.PostsController = Ember.ArrayController.extend({
itemController: 'post'
});
App.PostController = Ember.ObjectController.extend({
// the `title` property will be proxied to the underlying post.
titleLength: function() {
return this.get('title').length;
}.property('title')
});
In some cases it is helpful to return a different itemController depending on the particular item. Subclasses can do this by overriding lookupItemController.
For example:
App.MyArrayController = Ember.ArrayController.extend({
lookupItemController: function( object ) {
if (object.get('isSpecial')) {
return "special"; // use App.SpecialController
} else {
return "regular"; // use App.RegularController
}
}
});
The itemController instances will have a parentController property set to either the the parentController property of the ArrayController or to the ArrayController instance itself.

Ember.js - How do I insert a controller?

So my understanding from the Ember docs is that the pattern for views/controllers/models is as follows:
[view] <- [controller] <- [model]
(with views consuming controllers consuming models)
In my previous experience using Ember, I'd set up a view to consume a model, like so:
{{#with blogpost}}
{{#view MyApp.BlogPostView contentBinding="this"}}
<h1>{{title}}</h1>
<p>{{content}}</p>
{{/view}}
{{/with}}
Now say I create a controller:
MyApp.BlogPostController = Ember.BlogPostController.extend()
Where do I initialize this controller?
Looking at the Ember docs, it seems like this happens automatically if the controller is associated with a route, but what if I just want an ad-hoc controller which ties together a view and a model? This could be for an arbitrary component on my page.
Am I responsible for instanciating the controller? Should I use some kind of controllerBinding attribute? Will it be instantiated automatically with my model, or with my view?
Any advice appreciated; I'm comfortable with the model/view pattern in Ember, but I'm having some difficulty working out where controllers fit in.
Looking at the Ember docs, it seems like this happens automatically if the controller is associated with a route
This is correct, a controller associated with a route will be automatically instantiated by ember when needed.
but what if I just want an ad-hoc controller which ties together a view and a model? This could be for an arbitrary component on my page. Am I responsible for instanciating the controller? Should I use some kind of controllerBinding attribute? Will it be instantiated automatically with my model, or with my view?
There are different way's to get your arbitrary controller instantiated automatically by ember without the needs of doing it yourself.
For the examples, let's assume you have a controller which is not associated with any routes called LonelyController,
App.LonelyController = Ember.ArrayController.extend({
content: ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
});
Approach 1
Let's assume you have a route and you hook into setupController, if you try here to request you LonelyController with this.controllerFor('lonely'); this will make ember instantiate it for you:
App.IndexRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
setupController: function(controller, model) {
this.controllerFor('lonely').get('content');
// the above line will retrive successfully
// your `LonelyController`'s `content` property
}
});
Approach 2
Another possible way to get your LonelyController automatically instantiated by ember would be by defining a dependence with the needs API in another controller:
App.IndexController = Ember.ObjectController.extend({
needs: 'lonely',
someAction: function() {
this.get('controllers.lonely').get('content');
// the above line will retrive successfully
// your `LonelyController`'s `content` property
}
});
Using the needs API you could also doing something like this:
App.IndexController = Ember.ObjectController.extend({
needs: 'lonely',
lonelysContentBinding: 'controllers.lonely.content',
someAction: function() {
this.get('lonelysContent');
// the above line will retrive successfully
// your `LonelyController`'s `content` property
}
});
There are also some other combinations of the mentioned methods to get your LonelyController automatically instantiated, but I guess this should be more clear by now.
One last tip: to get a clue of what ember creates automatically under the hood you could also enable the generation logging to observe this in your console, which is very helpful, by doing:
var App = Ember.Application.create({
LOG_ACTIVE_GENERATION: true
});
Hope it helps.

Ember.js arraycontroller call from view

I might be using this all wrong, but:
I've got an ArrayController representing a collection of products. Each product gets rendered and there are several actions a user could take, for example edit the product title or copy the description from a different product.
Question is: how do you interact with the controller for the specific product you're working with? How would the controller know which product was being edited?
I also tried to create an Ember.Select with selectionBinding set to "controller.somevar" but that also failed.
I think the most important thing you need to do, is first move as much logic as you can away from the views, and into controllers.
Another thing that would be useful in your case, is to have an itemController for each product in the list. That way, you can handle item specific logic in this item controller.
I don't have enough information to understand your architecture, so I will make a few assumptions.
Given you have the following ProductsController:
App.ProductsController = Ember.ArrayController.extend();
You need to create a ProductController that will be created to wrap every single product on its own.
App.ProductController = Ember.ObjectController.extend();
You need to modify your template as follows:
{{#each controller itemController="product"}}
<li>name</li>
{{/each}}
Now every product in your list will have its own ProductController, which can handle one product's events and will act as the context for every list item.
Another option:
If you will only be handling one product at a time, you can use routes to describe which product you are working with:
App.Router.map(function() {
this.resource('products', { path: '/products' }, function() {
this.resource('product', { path: '/:product_id' }, function() {
this.route('edit');
});
});
});
And create a controller for editing a product:
App.ProductEditController = Ember.ObjectController.extend();
And your list items would link to that product route:
{{#each controller}}
<li>{{#linkTo "product.edit" this}}name{{/linkTo}}</li>
{{/each}}
If you define itemController on your ProductsController you don't need to specify that detail in your template:
App.ProductsController = Em.ArrayController.extend({
itemController: 'product',
needs: ['suppliers'],
actions: {
add: function() {
// do something to add an item to content collection
}
}
});
App.ProductController = Em.ObjectController.extend({
actions: {
remove: function() {
// do something to remove the item
}
}
});
Use a collection template like this:
<button {{action="add"}}>Add Item</button>
<ul>
{{#each controller}}
<li>{{name}} <button {{action="remove"}}>x</button></li>
{{/each}}
</ul>
The Ember documentation describesitemController here:
You can even define a function lookupItemController which can dynamically decide the item controller (eg based on model type perhaps).
The thing I found when rendering a collection wrapped in an ArrayController within another template/view is the way #each is used. Make sure you use {{#each controller}} as Teddy Zeeny shows otherwise you end up using the content model items and NOT the item controller wrapped items. You may not notice this until you try using actions which are intended to be handled by the item controller or other controller based content decoration.
When I need to nest an entire collection in another view I use the view helper as follows to set the context correctly so that any collection level actions (eg an add item button action) get handled by the array controller and not by the main controller setup by the route.
So in my products template I would do something like this to list the nested suppliers (assuming your route for 'product' has properly the 'suppliers' controller):
{{view controller=controllers.suppliers templateName="products/suppliers"}}
The suppliers template just follows the same pattern as the template I show above.

How can I bind the element ID for an Ember View?

My model "content.id" contains a string, e,g "123":
{{view Em.TextArea idBinding="content.id"}}
Instead of just setting the id of this view to "123", I'd like it to be "message-123", basically customizing the string being used. Sadly, Ember does not allow bindings to be functions, which would solve my problem (I could define such a function on the controller).
What's the best way to achieve this?
You could define a computed property in the controller (or elsewhere):
The controller
MyApp.ApplicationController = Ember.Controller.extend({
content: "a-content",
editedContent: function() {
return "message-" + this.get('content');
}.property('content')
});
The view
MyApp.FooView = Ember.View.extend({
    tagName: 'p'
});
The template (where content is a String, here)
{{#view MyApp.FooView elementIdBinding="editedContent"}}
{{content}}
{{/view}}
And the JSFiddle is here.
EDIT
How can the view see the property editedContent since it belongs on the ApplicationController controller?
The router, after started, automatically render the ApplicationView, or its template when there is no ApplicationView defined. If you want more detail, I suggest you to read the Ember guide: Understanding the Ember.js Router: A Primer.
And {{editedContent}} directly get the controller editedContent property, because the default view context is its controller, as you can read in Ember Blog - 1.0 Prerelease:
The {{#view}} helper no longer changes the context, instead maintaining the parent context by default. Alternatively, we will use the controller property if provided. You may also choose to directly override the context property. The order is as follows:
Specified controller
Supplied context (usually by Handlebars)
parentView's context (for a child of a ContainerView)