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Defining Your Routes

When your application starts, the router is responsible for displaying templates, loading data, and otherwise setting up application state. It does so by matching the current URL to the routes that you've defined.

The map method of your Ember application's router can be invoked to define URL mappings. When calling map, you should pass a function that will be invoked with the value this set to an object which you can use to create routes.

app/router.js

Router.map(function() {
  this.route('about', { path: '/about' });
  this.route('favorites', { path: '/favs' });
});

Now, when the user visits /about, Ember.js will render the about template. Visiting /favs will render the favorites template.

Heads up! You get a few routes for free: the route:application and route:index (corresponding to the / path). See below for more details.

You can leave off the path if it is the same as the route name. In this case, the following is equivalent to the above example:

app/router.js

Router.map(function() {
  this.route('about');
  this.route('favorites', { path: '/favs' });
});

Inside your templates, you can use {{link-to}} to navigate between routes, using the name that you provided to the route method (or, in the case of /, the name index).

{{#link-to 'index'}}<img class="logo">{{/link-to}}

<nav>
  {{#link-to 'about'}}About{{/link-to}}
  {{#link-to 'favorites'}}Favorites{{/link-to}}
</nav>

The {{link-to}} helper will also add an active class to the link that points to the currently active route.

You can customize the behavior of a route by creating an Ember.Route subclass. For example, to customize what happens when your user visits /, create an route:index:

app/routes/index.js

export default Ember.Route.extend({
  setupController: function(controller) {
    // Set the IndexController's `title`
    controller.set('title', 'My App');
  }
});

controller:index is the starting context for the index template. Now that you've set title, you can use it in the template:

<!-- get the title from the IndexController -->
<h1>{{title}}</h1>

(If you don't explicitly define an controller:index, Ember.js will automatically generate one for you.)

Ember.js automatically figures out the names of the routes and controllers based on the name you pass to this.route.

URL	Route Name	Controller `app/controllers/`	Route `app/routes/`	Template `app/templates/`
`/`	`index`	↳`index.js`	↳`index.js`	↳`index.hbs`
`/about`	`about`	↳`about.js`	↳`about.js`	↳`about.hbs`
`/favs`	`favorites`	↳`favorites.js`	↳`favorites.js`	↳`favorites.hbs`

Nested Routes

You can define nested routes by passing a callback to this.route:

app/router.js

Router.map(function() {
  this.route('posts', { path: '/posts' }, function() {
    this.route('new');
  });
});

This router creates these routes:

URL	Route Name	Controller `app/controllers/`	Route `app/routes/`	Template `app/templates/`
`/`	`index`	↳`index.js`	↳`index.js`	↳`index.js`
N/A	`posts`¹	↳`posts.js`	↳`posts.js`	↳`posts.hbs`
`/posts`	`posts.index`	↳`posts.js` ↳`/posts/index.js`	↳`posts.js` ↳`/posts/index.js`	↳`posts.hbs` ↳`posts/index.hbs`
`/posts/new`	`posts.new`	↳`posts.js` ↳`/posts/new.js`	↳`posts.js` ↳`/posts/new.js`	↳`posts.hbs` ↳`/templates/posts/new.hbs`

¹ Transitioning to posts or creating a link to posts is equivalent to transitioning to posts.index or linking to posts.index

A nested route's names includes the names of its ancestors. If you want to transition to a route (either via transitionTo or {{#link-to}}), make sure to use the full route name (posts.new, not new).

Visiting / renders the index template, as you would expect.

Visiting /posts is slightly different. It will first render the posts template. Then, it will render the posts/index template into the posts template's outlet.

Finally, visiting /posts/new will first render the posts template, then render the posts/new template into its outlet.

Multi-word Model Names

For multi-word models all the names are camel cased except for the dynamic segment. For example, a model named BigMac would have a resource path of /bigMacs/:big_mac_id, route named bigMac, template named bigMac.

Dynamic Segments

One of the responsibilities of a route handler is to convert a URL into a model.

For example, if we have the route this.route('posts');, our route handler might look like this:

app/posts/route.js

export default Ember.Route.extend({
  model: function() {
    return $.getJSON("/url/to/some/posts.json");
  }
});

The posts template will then receive a list of all available posts as its context.

Because /posts represents a fixed model, we don't need any additional information to know what to retrieve. However, if we want a route to represent a single post, we would not want to have to hardcode every possible post into the router.

Enter dynamic segments.

A dynamic segment is a portion of a URL that starts with a : and is followed by an identifier.

app/router.js

Router.map(function() {
  this.route('posts');
  this.route('post', { path: '/post/:post_id' });
});

app/routes/post.js

export default Ember.Route.extend({
  model: function(params) {
    return $.getJSON("/url/to/some/posts/" + params.post_id + ".json");
  }
});

If your model does not use the id property in the URL, you should define a serialize method on your route:

app/router.js

Router.map(function() {
  this.route('post', {path: '/posts/:post_slug'});
});

app/routes/post.js

export default Ember.Route.extend({
  model: function(params) {
    // the server returns `{ slug: 'foo-post' }`
    return Ember.$.getJSON('/posts/' + params.post_slug);
  },

  serialize: function(model) {
    // this will make the URL `/posts/foo-post`
    return { post_slug: model.get('slug') };
  }
});

The default serialize method inserts the model's id into the route's dynamic segment (in this case, :post_id).

Initial routes

A few routes are immediately available within your application:

route:application is entered when your app first boots up. It renders the application template.
route:index is the default route, and will render the index template when the user visits / (unless / has been overridden by your own custom route).

These routes are part of every application, so you don't need to specify them in your app/router.js.

Wildcard / globbing routes

You can define wildcard routes that will match multiple routes. This could be used, for example, if you'd like a catch-all route which is useful when the user enters an incorrect URL not managed by your app.

// app/router.js
Router.map(function() {
  this.route('catchall', {path: '/*wildcard'});
});

Like all routes with a dynamic segment, you must provide a context when using a {{link-to}} or transitionTo to programatically enter this route.

app/routes/application.js

export default Ember.Route.extend({
  actions: {
    error: function() {
      this.transitionTo('catchall', 'application-error');
    }
  }
});

With this code, if an error bubbles up to the Application route, your application will enter the catchall route and display /application-error in the URL.

Nested Routes
Multi-word Model Names
Dynamic Segments
Initial routes
Wildcard / globbing routes