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https://github.com/tmeasday/meteor-router


https://github.com/tmeasday/meteor-router

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README 

        
# Meteor Router



Meteor Router builds on [page.js](https://github.com/visionmedia/page.js) to provide reactive, filterable routing for [Meteor](http://www.meteor.com/) applications.



## NOTE



Note that the router package is **deprecated**. Work has now shifted to [Iron Router](https://github.com/EventedMind/meteor-iron-router). Please consider using IR instead of Router on new projects!



## Installation



Meteor Router can be installed with [Meteorite](https://github.com/oortcloud/meteorite/). From inside a Meteorite-managed app:



``` sh

$ mrt add router

```



Note that Router version 0.4.3 works with Meteor 0.5.8 and later, and 0.4.2 works with Meteor 0.5.7 and earlier.



## API



### Basics



To get the current page:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.page();

```



This is a reactive variable which will trigger invalidations as the app changes pages. Usually, you'll just want to render the template that corresponds to the current page using the following helper that finds the template by name:



``` handlebars

{{> renderPage}}

```



It's common to render the inside page isolated from the layout:



``` handlebars

{{#isolate}} {{> renderPage}} {{/isolate}}

```



To define a route, simply specify the URL it matches and the name of the template it should render. If you want to get fancy, you can specify a reactive function that returns a template name. It will get repeatedly executed as its reactive dependencies change.



Be careful not to specify your routes inside the ```Meteor.startup``` function, or the routing won't work for the first load.

``` javascript

Meteor.Router.add({

  '/news': 'news',



  '/about': function() {

    if (Session.get('aboutUs')) {

      return 'aboutUs';

    } else {

      return 'aboutThem';

    }

  },



  '*': 'not_found'

});

```



To navigate to such a URL from in the app, either create a link which links to the URL (the router will intercept clicks and trigger relevant state changes), or call directly:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.to('/news');

```



Note that this doesn't reload the app, it instead uses HTML5 `pushState` to change the URL whilst remaining loaded.



### Route functions



When the route function is called, `this` corresponds to a page.js [`Context`](https://github.com/visionmedia/page.js#context) object, allowing you to do the following:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.add({

  'posts/:id': function(id) {

    console.log('we are at ' + this.canonicalPath);

    console.log("our parameters: " + this.params);



    // access parameters in order a function args too

    Session.set('currentPostId', id);

    return 'showPost';

  }

});

```



### Named Routes



If you specify your route with simply a template name, then you'll set up a _named route_. So instead of calling `Meteor.Router.to('/news')`, you can call `Meteor.Router.to('news')` (`news` is the name of the route). Additionally, that named route sets up the following:



  - `Meteor.Router.newsPath()` -- which is `/news` in this case

  - `Meteor.Router.newsUrl()` -- which is `http://yourhost.com/news`

  - `{{newsPath}}` and `{{newsUrl}}` -- handlebars helpers



If you are using a routing function, you'll need to manually supply a route name, like so:



```js

Meteor.Router.add({

  '/about': { as: 'about', to: function() {

    if (Session.get('aboutUs')) {

      return 'aboutUs';

    } else {

      return 'aboutThem';

    }

  }}

});



Meteor.Router.aboutPath(); // == '/about'

```



Additionally, you can provide a `and` property, which is a function that executes everytime the route executes (useful if your _template_ is always the same, but you want to have some side effects):



```js

Meteor.Router.add({

  '/posts/:_id': { to: 'showPost', and: function(id) {

    Session.set('currentPostId', id);

  }}

});



Meteor.Router.showPostPath(post) // == /posts/7

````



If your URL has named matches inside it, you can either pass in an object with those properties (e.g. `post = {_id: 7}` above), or you can pass the arguments in in order (e.g. `showPostPath(7)`);



### beforeRouting



Use `Meteor.Router.beforeRouting = function() {}` to set a callback to run before any routing function. Useful to reset session variables.



### Filtering



The current system of filtering in this package is the equivalent of an `after_filter` in Rails. To add a filter which will render the correct template for a page which requires login:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.filters({

  'checkLoggedIn': function(page) {

    if (Meteor.loggingIn()) {

      return 'loading';

    } else if (Meteor.user()) {

      return page;

    } else {

      return 'signin';

    }

  }

});

```



To turn the filter on, use one of:



``` javascript

// applies to all pages

Meteor.Router.filter('checkLoggedIn');



// applies to specific pages

Meteor.Router.filter('checkLoggedIn', {only: 'profile'});

Meteor.Router.filter('checkLoggedIn', {except: 'home'});



// accepts an array of pages

Meteor.Router.filter('checkLoggedIn', {only: ['profile', 'notifications'] });

Meteor.Router.filter('checkLoggedIn', {except: ['home', 'browse'] });

```



Note that filters build on reactivity. So the URL will not change but the user will see different pages as the state of the `Meteor.user()` property changes.



### Server-side routing



The router also allows a very simple server side routing function with a similar API:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.add('/posts/:id.xml', function(id) {

  return constructXMLForId(Posts.findOne(id));

});

```



Optionally you can also restrict the route by HTTP method:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.add('/posts/:id.xml', 'GET', function(id) {

  return constructXMLForId(Posts.findOne(id));

});

Meteor.Router.add('/posts/:id.xml', 'DELETE', function(id) {

  Posts.remove(id);

  return [204, 'No Content'];

});

```



The arguments to the routing function are the parameters you've specified in your URL, and the `this` within the function is an object with three properties:



* `this.params` -- the list of parameters, page.js style

* `this.request` -- a [Connect](http://www.senchalabs.org/connect/) request

* `this.response` -- a Connect response (use this to e.g. set headers on your response).



Your routing function can return one of the following:



* a string, the body of the response

* a number, the http status code

* an array, in one of the following forms:

  * `[body]`

  * `[statusCode, body]`

  * `[statusCode, headers, body]`, where `headers` is an object mapping header names to values.



Alternatively, rather than a routing function, you can just provide a fixed response:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.add('/404', [404, "There's nothing here!"]);

```



The server side router adds the bodyParser middleware, enabling automatic parsing of JSON, Mutipart and URL encoded forms. You can tweak the Multipart parsing, i.e. changing the uploaded files destination directory:



``` javascript

Meteor.Router.configure({

  bodyParser: {

    uploadDir: 'uploads',

    hash: 'sha1'

  }

});

```



The configure() call **MUST** be put before any add() call, otherwise it will throw an error.

For more information on options available, go to https://github.com/felixge/node-formidable



**NOTE**: Spark (meteor's template engine) does not currently run server side, so you are limited in what you can return here. Most likely you will want to return fairly simple things like JSON or XML documents, the construction of which is up to you.



## Examples



Check out `examples/simple-routed-app` for an extremely simple example of a filtered routed app. (To run, use meteorite: `cd examples/simple-routed-app; mrt run`).



Additionally, you might want to read [my blog post](http://bindle.me/blog/index.php/679/page-transitions-in-meteor-getleague-com) on page transitions in Meteor.



## Internet explorer 8+ support



If you want the router to work in older version of Internet Explorer that don't support pushState, you can use the [HTML5-History-API](https://github.com/devote/HTML5-History-API) polyfill:

```bash

  mrt add HTML5-History-API

```



## Older Versions of Meteor



(Versions prior to v0.8.0) use `{{renderPage}}` instead of `{{>renderPage}}`

## Contributing



To run the tests, ensure that the router is checked out to a folder called `router`, and then simply run:



``` sh

$ mrt test-packages router

```