Backbone Router not triggering route

Question

I have the following router:

appRouter = Backbone.Router.extend({
  routes: {
    '': 'inbox',
    'inbox': 'inbox',
    'discussions_engagement': 'contacts',
  },

  inbox: function(page) {
    console.log('inbox');
    var page = page || 1;
    engage.app.hydrateInbox(page, engage.app.showInbox);
  },
  ....
};

When I am on http://[...]/#inbox and I call

appRouter.navigate('inbox', {trigger: true});

the inbox action doesn't fire which is what I want to achieve. Now I have looked at the source of Backbone (https://github.com/documentcloud/backbone/blob/master/backbone.js#L1027) and I see that it doesn't support what I'm trying to do but is there some way of accomplishing this?

Answer 1

I would create an event manager in your engage.app object, like this:

var vent = _.extend({}, Backbone.Events);

Then in your router do this for the inbox route:

vent.trigger('inbox:show', page);

And handle that event in the engage.app object, doing the code there that used to be in the route handler.

Now, instead of calling appRouter.navigate you can trigger that same event.

Also, from that handler, you can call appRouter.navigate('inbox'); without passing true. Now you can get your app to the state you want without trying to force the route.