In the traditional MVC sense Routers don’t necessarily fit the semantics. Though a Backbone "router" is still very useful for any application/feature that needs URL routing/history capabilities. Backbone routers are used for routing your applications URL’s when using hash tags(#).
Defined routers should always contain at least one route and a function to map the particular route to. In the example below, we are going to define a route that is always called.
Optional Routes
Search route with query and optional page parameter is an optional route.
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: {
'search/:query': 'search',
'search/:query/p:page': 'search'
},
search: function(query, page) {
page = page || 0;
console.log(query);
console.log(page);
}
}));
Results:
TodoRouter.navigate('search/milk', {trigger: true});
This will print "milk", 0
TodoRouter.navigate('search/milk/p2', {trigger: true});
This will print "milk", 2
Note the duplicate routes are highlighted. We can resolve this issue with an optional route:
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: {
'search/:query /p:page ': 'search',
},
search: function(query, page) {
page = page || 0;
console.log(query);
console.log(page);
}
}));
What if we want to match ‘search/milk/p2/’?
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: {
'search/:query (/p:page)(/) ': 'search',
},
search: function(query, page) {
page = page || 0;
console.log(query);
console.log(page);
}
}));
We can use an optional trailing slash (/)
URI with Spaces
What if the URI you provide has encoded spaces?
To doRouter.navigate('search/Hello%20World/p2', {trigger: true})
You will get the following result, which is not decoded:
"Hello%20World", 2
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: {
'search/:query (/p:page)(/) ': 'search',
},
search: function(query, page) {
page = page || 0;
query = decodeURIComponent(query);
console.log(query);
console.log(page);
}
}));
The result will be decoded:
"Hello World", 2
Regex in Routes
Say we want to restrict parameter to numeric input, let's see how can achieve this:
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: {
'todos/:id': 'show'
},
show: function(id) {
console.log("id = " + id);
}
}));
TodoRouter.navigate('todos/2', {trigger: true})
Result: id = 2
TodoRouter.navigate('todos/notanid', {trigger: true})
Result id = notanid
So this shouldn’t trigger show.
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
show: function(id) {
console.log("id = " + id);
}
}));
TodoRouter.route(/^todos\/(\d+)$/, 'show');
Here each Regex Capture Group becomes a param.
TodoRouter.navigate('todos/2', {trigger: true}) // id = 2`
TodoRouter.navigate('todos/notanid', {trigger: true})
This doesn't trigger show.
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
initialize: function(){
this.route(/^todos\/(\d+)$/, 'show');
},
show: function(id) {
console.log("id = " + id);
}
}));
This keeps routes inside the router.
Advanced Regex Routes
Let's examine this advanced route formation:
/^search\/(\w+)(?:\/p(\d+))?\/?$/ --> 'search/:query(/p:page)'
This router matches:
'search/milk'
'search/milk/p2'
'search/milk/p2/'
But it doesn't match the following:
'searches/milk'
'search/milk/p2/p1'
'search/milk/2'
Catch-all Routes
Alert user when no route matches:
var TodoRouter = Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: {
'*path': 'notFound'
},
notFound: function(path) {
alert('Sorry! There is no content here.');
}
});
TodoRouter.navigate('nothinghere', {trigger: true})
This will result in:
File Path Route
Accept a file path and get its parts
var TodoRouter = new (Backbone.Router.extend({
routes: {
'file/*path': 'file'
},
file: function(path) {
var parts = path.split("/");
console.log(parts);
}
}));
TodoRouter.navigate("file/this/is/a/file.txt", {trigger: true});
Result:
[" this", "is", "a", "file.txt"]
If you want to learn about more follow my other articles on Backbone here: