How to fire an event to Ember from another framework - ember.js

Question

We are using version pre4 of ember.
We have a framework (SignalR) working parallel with ember that handles real-time notifications to our application. In the older versions of ember we were able to access the global reference of the router / controller. But with the new version of Ember this is no longer possible. (This is fine)
We have tried different approaches like setting up a global controller in the top route:
setupController: function(){
app.appController = this.controllerFor('app');
}
and sending an event to this controller, which bubbles up to the route like this:
notificator.update = function (context) {
app.appController.send('notificationOccured', context);
});
But this feels like working against the Ember team which just removed the global references.
So now to the big question: is there a better way to access the router or a controller from outside Ember? Preferably send an event to either with a context.
All help is appreciated!

Answer 1

So now to the big question: is there a better way to access the router or a controller from outside Ember? Preferably send an event to either with a context.
Yes. This sounds like a good fit for the ember instrumentation module. Have an appropriate controller subscribe to SignalR events, then trigger them whenever your app handles real-time notification.
First, add a method to ApplicationController for processing updates. If not defined here the event would bubble to the router.
App.ApplicationController = Ember.Controller.extend({
count: 0,
name: 'default',
signalrNotificationOccured: function(context) {
this.incrementProperty('count');
this.set('name', context.name);
}
});
Next, setup your ApplicationController by subscribing to the signalr.notificationOccured event. Use the before callback to log the event and send it's payload to the controller.
App.ApplicationRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
setupController: function (controller, model) {
Ember.Instrumentation.subscribe("signalr.notificationOccured", {
before: function(name, timestamp, payload) {
console.log('Recieved ', name, ' at ' + timestamp + ' with payload: ', payload);
controller.send('signalrNotificationOccured', payload);
},
after: function() {}
});
}
});
Then from your SignalR Application, use Ember.Instrumentation.instrument to send payload to your ApplicationController as follows:
notificator.update = function (context) {
Ember.Instrumentation.instrument("signalr.notificationOccured", context);
});
I posted a working copy with simulated SignalR notifications here: http://jsbin.com/iyexuf/1/edit
Docs on the instrumentation module can be found here, also check out the specs for more examples.

Answer 2

You probably shouldn't be doing this but here's a way to get access to the application's controllers, views, models and router instances. When your application is initialized, controllers, views, models and router are all registered in the application container __container__
APP.__container__.lookup('controller:foo').get('content');
APP.__container__.lookup('view:foo').get('templateName');
APP.__container__.lookup('router:main');
What i think you should do is encapsulate calls to the 3rd party library inside Ember and let Ember manage the whole application. See this attempt to make JQuery UI ember-aware