How to extend a main controller within a meteor package

Question

What is the right way to extend a main controller within a meteor package?

This is my case, the main controller is inside the app.js file, located in

both/controllers/app.js

The content is

AppController = RouteController.extend({
  layoutTemplate: 'appLayout'
});

Inside my-package folder, I've created a router.js file

packages/my-package/lib/router.js

Below the content of the file, here came the question: why if I move the DashboardController declaration outside the Meteor.startup() function, it doesn't work?

DashboardController = AppController.extend({}); // here doesn't work

Meteor.startup(function () {

    Router.route('/dashboard', {
        controller: DashboardController,
        name: 'dashboard'
});

The output is

ReferenceError: AppController is not defined

Answer 1

why if I move the DashboardController declaration outside the Meteor.startup() function, it doesn't work?

That's because of the load order of Meteor build process : every package JS files are loaded according to dependencies between them and only after the actual application code is executed (which makes sense).

The solution is to move your DashboardController inside a Meteor.startup block so that it's executed after the application code had a chance to define AppController.

You could also move your AppController inside an application-core or application-controllers local package of yours and depend on that package.