undelegating events handlers on 'lose-focus' - backbone.js

I am trying to phrase this as clearly as I can.
I have a view that shows a form. I am tying an event handler to the submit button like this:
events: {
'click #bsubmit': 'save'
}
In the save function, on success, I take care to undelegateEvents() before I navigate away:
...
that.undelegateEvents();
window.router.navigate('#/home');
...
So if someone comes to this page, submits the page and goes to (actually: is sent back) the home page, is all good.
However, there is also a 'home' link shown there, which part of the top level template. It is specified like this:
Home
So if someone comes to this page, clicks on the home link, and (from there) returns to this page, the event is mapped a second time. Now when someone submits the form, it gets submitted two times.
Given that I have many views, and the navigation away can happen in many ways, what is the common pattern to undelegateEvents when navigation happens at a higher (uncontrollable) manner? Or am I doing something fundamentally wrong?

In your case you don't need to undelegate events. Simply remove your form from the DOM with $('el').remove(), javascript events will automatically be removed
The best solution would be to have a HomepageView and FormView each in the same container (let say .container).
Example of a complete scenario:
User go to #homepage, we instanciate a HomepageView and render it in .container
User go to #form, we instanciate a FormView and render it in .container
User go to #homepage, we instanciate a HomepageView and render it in .container
...etc, etc
So, each time the user navigate to a new route the previous view is replaced by the new one.
As the previous view HTML no longer belongs to the DOM you don't need anymore to undelegate events.
Of course the .container element do not belongs to our views, each view has it's own element rendered inside the .container element.
Read this blog post for more informations.

Related

Calling a view controller from index.html

I have an index.html that has a top bar with links and a side bar with links. I want the center to be replaced with content (ng-view). Let's say the top bar is Pictures, Stats, Chat. The side bar is Tigers, Lions, Bears.
These never change. This is why index.html holds them. The top bar of Pictures, Stats, Chat I want to actually route to different views/controllers (replaces ng-view on index.html). Easy.
However, when inside a given view controller (let's say Pictures) I now want to know what side bar was clicked (I would like to default to a given side bar animal when Pictures is first clicked in the app since that would be required) and I'd also like to be able to copy the link directly to there (ie Pictures/Bears (but this always just goes to the Pictures controller but inside there I know Bears was clicked so I can act accordingly)).
So if I click Tigers, the controller will know this and I can code it to get pictures of Tigers.
I don't want to put that side bar into each page itself since it's always the same. I just want it on index.html to avoid repeating myself even though this would be more direct in terms of coding each top bar view. This would be something I'd fall back to in the case of what I'm asking to do isn't possible.
I'm also wondering if it's possible to maintain the current side bar value when they click on a different top link animal. So if I was in Pictures/Lions and they click Bears, it would know to route Pictures/Bears. Since it's staying in Pictures would it really even need to route? Can it route and then call a method on the Pictures controller passing in the animal so it can do what it needs to with that information?
Try making a service like animalService that keeps track of the selected animal. This will act like your own route handler for just that side menu.
The controller for the side menu would then be able to call animalService.selectAnimal(selectedAnimal) to update the selection.
Each main page controller could then watch the value of the selected animal from animalService. There are a few ways to do this, but it would probably be easiest to use a subscription based approach:
Each controller would call animalService.subscribeToChange('controllerName', callback) on initialization and then on destroy it would call animalService.unsubscribeFromChange('controllerName'). The animalService would keep a list/map of all of the subscribed controllers, so it can execute the callback every time the selectAnimal function is called and detects a change.
If you provide a code sample I could try to give a more detailed solution.
Alternatively
You could take advantage of $rootScope. I find this a bit more hacky, but it would be probably quicker to implement. The side menu can access a root scope variable via something like $root.currentAnimal, and it can both get and set that value. Then each controller can use $rootScope.$watch('currentAnimal', function() {}) to trigger something on change ($rootScope is a service).

Call function when a tab in tabbar is first opened (onsen-ui)

I need to load a specific JavaScript function after one of the tabs in the tabbar finishes loading (after it is clicked for the first time). I don't really understand how to set up an event listener with the onsen-ui tabbar (ons-tabbar), and the docs were not very clear.
Basically, what I am trying to do, is create a few graphs on one of the pages. This page is loaded up when a ons-tab is selected and the partial loads. However, I need the JavaScript that creates the graphs to only load after the page is loaded (the JavaScript looks for the elements to position the graph in the partial, hence my problem right now is that the JS is loading first and not finding the html elements in the partial because they have't been loaded yet). How do I create an event listener to detect when one of the tabs are selected to run a specific code of JavaScript?
To be a little bit more clear, I am using the persistent attribute on this specific tab, so essentially I only need this event listener to run the JS code once, when the tab is first opened. However, I don't understand how to get the once event listener to work...
For the reference: http://onsen.io/reference/ons-tabbar.html#methods-summary
There are three tabbar methods related to events: on, once and off.
That means the way to use them is myTabbar.on(...), for example. You can see in that link their parameters as well. Also, right below there are the three tabbar events. In this case I think you want to use postchange, right?
In your HTML you create a tabbar and assign it to a variable with var attribute, as I am sure you already know:
<ons-tabbar var="myTabbar">
<ons-tab page="tab0.html" label="Tab0" active="true"></ons-tab>
<ons-tab page="tab1.html" label="Tab1"></ons-tab>
<ons-tab page="tab2.html" label="Tab2"></ons-tab>
</ons-tabbar>
Now, you have to wait until the app is initialised and Onsen UI is loaded in order to set the event listeners, and you can use ons.ready() for that.
Going back to the tabbar events method, since you only need to trigger the functionality with a specific tab you need to filter the tabs inside the listener. Therefore, if you use myTabbar.once('postchange', ...) the listener itself will be triggered only once regardless the filter you set inside, so perhaps it will be triggered with a different tab and then deleted for the tab you want. You cannot use it in this case.
Instead of that, you can set a listener with myTabbar.on('postchange', ...) that triggers always, then filter the tabs inside and remove the listener only when you want with myTabbar.off('postchange'). Something like this:
ons.ready(function() {
myTabbar.on('postchange', function(event) {
// Only with the tab we want, we can use the index or the name
if (event.index === 2) {
console.log('postchange and do stuff with the tab');
console.log(event.tabItem);
// Delete this listener so it's only triggered the first time
myTabbar.off('postchange');
}
});
Working here: http://codepen.io/frankdiox/pen/QbYEaq
In case you have other listener over postchange, you can use the second parameter of myTabbar.off(...) to remove the exact listener you want and not the others.
Hope it helps!

Ionic Back Button Doesn't Hide after exhausting $window.history.back()

I have an ionic app that has a search template that has a form where you can query posts by keyword. I also have a service that returns the post(s) as a list on another view. All that is working well.
My search controller upon submitting the search form uses:
$state.go('app.search.results', {'searchId': hash});
so that I can have a unique url for that search. I needed this unique url to implement 'back' functionality so that if a user clicks on one of the posts in the list, after viewing the post if they decide to click back, they would get to see the results of the search still (by default they would be returned to the search form without any results anymore).
To allow for a back to search results I implemented a custom back button function and put it on the ionic back button element like this:
<ion-nav-back-button ng-click="goBack()">
and then setup a the custom function:
$scope.goBack = function() {
$window.history.back();
}
All of this works well, I can go back to search results and see them, essentially very much like normal browser back functionality.
Problem for me is that when I have gone all the way 'back' via the back button, my initial state contains the 'Back' button and clicking it does not go anywhere and the 'Back' button still shows. Ionic does pretty good about hiding the back button when it shouldn't be there but in this case not so. Any ideas for how to check when history is exhausted and hiding the back button conditionally would be appreciated.
EDIT:
Here is a jsFiddle ; Note: open fiddle in a new, separate tab to see back button issue. FYI Search is in the menu.
One of the few qualms I have with Ionic is their "smart" navigation. I have run into a lot of problems with this myself. My solution was to create a back button of my own, this back button stores previous states and their params so you can go back and not lose search results for example with your scenario.
This component gives you both a back button and breadcrumbs to use (or you can just use back button)
It is open source and feel free to use it!
jscBreadcrumbs
Strange Milk - Breadcrumbs Post
Here is your jsFiddle with the jscBreadcrumbs implemented and working:
jsFiddle
jscbreadcrumbs
You use $window.history.back(), I think you should use $ionicHistory.goBack(); instead. It can control the history and view and state in the ionic way.

Intercepting all clicks with AngularJS to warn user of unsaved data

I have a lengthy form customers will need to fill out. If they click a link on a page, it will navigate away from that Controller and they will lose any data they may have already input.
If I can determine the form has not yet been saved, how can I intercept any click to the links on the page so I can ask the user if they want to save their form first?
No code yet- sorry. Many thanks.
I've written an angularjs directive that you can apply to any form that will automatically watch for changes and message the user if they reload the page or navigate away. #see https://github.com/facultymatt/angular-unsavedChanges
Hopefully you find this directive useful!
sorry for the late answer but mabye someone stumbles upon this and finds it useful. I have encountered the same problem and at the beginning i tryed to use the ng-dirty class applyed to the form element but because i had some custom controls the ng-bind won't be applyed when i changed some fields.
The best way i found so far is to detect when the model is changed with the use of $locationChangeStart event.
$scope.$on('$locationChangeStart', function (event, next, current) {
//we are about to leave the page so it's time to see if the form was modified by the user
if (!$scope.isFormClean())
{
event.preventDefault();
}
});

Backbone.js: How to utilize router.navigate to manipulate browser history?

I am writing something like a registration process containing several steps, and I want to make it a single-page like system so after some studying Backbone.js is my choice.
Every time the user completes the current step they will click on a NEXT button I create and I use the router.navigate method to update the url, as well as loading the content of the next page and doing some fancy transition with javascript.
Result is, URL is updated which the page is not refreshed, giving a smooth user experience. However, when the user clicks on the back button of the browser, the URL gets updated to that of a previous step, but the content stays the same. My question is through what way I can capture such an event and currently load the content of the previous step and present that to the user? Or even better, can I rely on browser cache to load that previously loaded page?
EDIT: in particular, I'm trying something like mentioned in this article.
You should not use route.navigate but let the router decide which form to display based on the current route.
exemple :
a link in your current form of the registration process :
<a href="#form/2" ...
in the router definition :
routes:{
"form/:formNumber" : "gotoForm"
},
gotoForm:function(formNumber){
// the code to display the correct form for the current url based on formNumber
}
and then use Backbone.history.start() to bootstrap routing

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