Does JavascriptMVC support bookmarkable URLs?

Question

I am thinking of porting my current application to use JavascriptMVC + RESTfull web services. However, I am not sure if I can create bookmarkable URLs with JavascriptMVC.

For example: the webapp is an app to host courses, and will have URLs like

/courses/RDBMS/lecture/1

Is it possible to create such URLs with JavascriptMVC?

Answer 1

You could consider using jQuery.address ( http://www.asual.com/jquery/address/ ) in order to manage your URLs.

jQuery.address allows you to set crawlable URLs such as "http://example.com/#!/user/5" and listen for address changes and act accordingly.

In my own code, I set up an address based router from within the steal configuration file as follows.

steal.plugins(
          'jquery/controller',
          'jquery/controller/subscribe',
          'jquery/view/ejs',
          'jquery/controller/view',
          'jquery/model',
          'jquery/dom/fixture',
          'jquery/dom/form_params',
          'steal/less')                   
    .css('css/vendor/reset-fonts-grids')
    .resources('vendor/jquery.address-1.3.1.min.js')
    .models('user')
    .controllers('user')
    .views()
    .then(function() {
        steal.less('css/style');

        // Set up a router
        $.address.baseURL('/basePath');

        // $.address.crawlable(true);
        $.address.change(function(event) {
            var path = event.path;
            switch(true) {
            // Matches http://example.com/#!/ or http://example.com/
            case /^\/$/.test(path):
                $('#page').empty();
                break;
            // Matches http://example.com/#!/user/42/profile
            case /^\/user\/[0-9]+\/profile/.test(path):
                var userId = path.split("/")[2];
                // Instantiate and load a controller
                new User.Controllers.User($('body'),userId);
                break;
            case /^\/search/.test(path):
                $.log('search');
                break;
            default:
                $.log(event.path);
            }
        });
    });

You can then call a new page from HTML-land via

<a href="/" onclick="$.address.value('/'); return false;">root url</a>

Or from JS land via

$.address.value('/user/10/profile');