multiple matching routes

Question

I've got a backbone.js application that defines two controllers, and the controllers both define route patterns which match the location.hash. I'm having trouble getting both of them to fire - e.g.

ManagerController = Backbone.Controller.extend({
   routes: {
      ":name":      "doStuff"
   },

   doStuff : function(name) {
      console.log("doStuff called...");
   }
});

Component1Controller = Backbone.Controller.extend({
   routes: {
      "xyz123":      "doMoreStuff"
   },

   doMoreStuff : function() {
      console.log("doMoreStuff called...");
   }
});

so if the url is "http://mysite.com/#xyz123", then I am seeing 'doStuff()' called, or if I comment out that route, then 'doMoreStuff()' is called. But not both.

I'm using this architecture because my page is highly component oriented, and each component defines its own Controller. A 'component manager' also defines a Controller which does some house keeping on all routes.

Should I be able to configure two controllers that both respond to the same route? Cheers,

Colin

Answer 1

Short answer: No, you can't do that. One Controller per page.

Long answer: When you instantiate a new Controller, it adds its routes to the History singleton. The History singleton is monitoring the hash component of the URL, and when the hash changes, it scans the routes for the first expression that matches its needs. It then fires the function associated with that route (that function has been bound to the controller in which it was declared). It will only fire once, and if there is a conflict the order in which it fires is formally indeterminate. (In practice it's probably deterministic.)

Philosophical answer: The controller is a "view" object which affects the presentation of the whole page based on the hash component of the URL. Its purpose is to provide bookmark-capable URLs that the user can reach in the future, so that when he goes to a URL he can start from a pre-selected view among many. From your description, it sounds like you're manipulating this publicly exposed, manually addressable item to manipulate different parts of your viewport, while leaving others alone. That's not how it works.

One of the nice things about Backbone is that if you pass it a route that's already a regular expression, it will use it as-is. So if you're trying to use the controller to create a bookmarkable description of the layout (component 1 in the upper right hand corner in display mode "A", component 2 in the upper left corner in display mode "B", etc) I can suggest a number of alternatives-- allocate each one a namespace in the hash part of the URL, and create routes that ignore the rest, i.e.

routes: {
    new RegExp('^([^\/]*)/.*$'): 'doComponent1stuff',
    new RegExp('^[^\/]*/([^\/]*)\/.*$': 'doComponent2stuff',
}

See how the first uses only items after the first slash, the second after the second slash, etc. You can encode your magic entirely how you want.

I suggest, though, that if you're going to be doing something with the look and feel of the components, and you want that to be reasonably persistent, that you look into the views getting and setting their cookies from some local store; if they're small enough, cookies will be enough.