Whats the Advantage of Marionette AppRouter+Controller over Backbone.Router?

Question

From my understanding, the differences is the callback functions to events on an AppRouter should exist in the Controller, instead of the same Router object. Also there is a one-to-one relationship between such AppRouter & Controllers, all my code from Router now moves to Controller, I don't see too much point of that? So why use them? I must be missing something?

Answer 1

The way I see it is to separate concerns:

• the controller actually does the work (assembling the data, instanciating the view, displaying them in regions, etc.), and can update the URL to reflect the application's state (e.g. displayed content)
• the router simply triggers the controller action based on the URL that has been entered in the address bar

So basically, if you're on your app's starting page, it should work fine without needing any routers: your actions (e.g. clicking on a menu entry) simply fire the various controller actions.

Then, you add on a router saying "if this URL is called, execute this controller action". And within your controller you update the displayed URL with navigate("my_url_goes_here"). Notice you do NOT pass trigger: true.

For more info, check out Derick's blog post http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/08/28/dont-execute-a-backbone-js-route-handler-from-your-code/ (paragraph "The “AHA!” Moment Regarding Router.Navigate’s Second Argument")

I've also covered the topic in more length in the free preview of my book on Marionette. See pages 32-46 here: http://samples.leanpub.com/marionette-gentle-introduction-sample.pdf