Backbone Router not working with pushState - .htaccess

I want to have every page request redirect to my index.html, and any link (not #urls - /real/urls) clicked in my app to run through router.js so there are essentially no page refreshes - purely ajax. Is there an easy way to do this with Backbone routing and htaccess?
I have it working at the moment if I take away {pushState: true} and format my links like #login. However, when I enable pushState and click on #login, nothing happens. Instead, it is only once I refresh the page that Backbone interprets the #login and follows the route to render loginView.
Here is my router:
// Filename: router.js
define( [ 'views/beta/requestInvite', 'views/beta/login' ],
function(requestInviteView, loginView) {
var AppRouter = Backbone.Router.extend( {
routes : {
// Pages
'login' : 'login',
// Default
'*actions' : 'defaultAction'
},
// Pages
login : function() {
loginView.render();
},
defaultAction : function(actions) {
requestInviteView.render();
}
});
var initialize = function() {
var app_router = new AppRouter;
Backbone.history.start({pushState: true});
};
return {
initialize : initialize
};
});
What I would like to happen is in requestInviteView, when the link to /login is clicked, the url changes to /login and the loginView is rendered.
Thanks for any help!

Changing from hash to pushstate is not that trivial as changing single parameter as one may be led to think. What i do is catch the click event in my view and call app.navigate to trigger the route.
app.navigate("/login", {trigger: true});
http://backbonejs.org/#Router-navigate

Although Anthony's answer will work, using trigger: true is usually not the best course of action. Instead your app should be structured so you can call navigate with the default trigger value left to false.
Derick Bailey talks about the issue on his blog at http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/08/28/dont-execute-a-backbone-js-route-handler-from-your-code/ (paragraph "The “AHA!” Moment Regarding Router.Navigate’s Second Argument")
In addition, an entire chapter explaining routing in more detail (including why you should leave trigger to false) can be dowloaded for free in this pdf book sample: http://samples.leanpub.com/marionette-gentle-introduction-sample.pdf (full disclosure: I'm the book author)

Related

How to handle large number of redirects in Node/Vue app?

I am working on migrating an existing app to a new tech stack that uses Node and MongoDB on the backend and Vue on the frontend. I have a fairly large number of pages that will need to be redirected to new URLs (over 50). I know I can do something like this in the frontend:
const appRouter = new Router({
mode: 'history',
routes: [
{ path: '/a', redirect: '/a2' },
{ path: '/b', redirect: '/b2' },
{ path: '/c', redirect: '/c2' },
]
});
However it doesn't strike me as particularly elegant. I could see keeping the redirects in another file and importing them to keep my router file neater, but that seems like just a formatting benefit.
I'm wondering how other people handle a large number of redirects in Vue? Would this be better to do at the server-level with Node?
If boilerplate is the problem, you can use something like:
const router = new VueRouter({
routes: [
{ path: '/([abc])', redirect: to => {
returect to.path + '2'; // to.path will be like '/a'
}}
]
})
Notice that the part inside () is a regex that can be customized.
I have a fairly large number of pages that will need to be redirected to new URLs
When we talk about redirecting a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) in the context of a Single Page Application (SPA) like Vue with Vue Router, hosted by a web server like Node.js, we might mean one of two things:
we've changed the route of a view within our Vue SPA
we've changed the location of our SPA (the resource) from one location to another.
To determine which kind of redirect you need to do, we can examine how the URL will change. URLs are made up of these components:
scheme:[//[user[:password]#]host[:port]][/path][?query][#fragment]
By default, Vue Router uses the #fragment (hash) portion of the URL to change views, so if this changes then we should redirect using Alias or Redirect.
If any other portion of the URL changes, we should have Node.js return an HTTP status code for redirect, like 301 Moved Permanently or 302 Moved Temporarily.
Normally the solution from #acdcjunior is good enough, but sometimes you may prefer hooking beforeRouteUpdate to implement the redirect.
You can check vue-router: dynamic Routing for more details.
Below is one simple sample is from the official document:
const User = {
template: '...',
beforeRouteUpdate (to, from, next) {
if ( to.match(new RegExp('your_regex_expression'))) {
next('redirect_url')
} else {
// default
next()
}
}
}
Or in main.js by using global guards:
import router from './router'
router.beforeEach((to, from, next) => {
if ( to.match(new RegExp('your_regex_expression'))) {
next('redirect_url')
} else {
// default
next()
}
})

How to use "And" in a Gherkin using cucumber.js

I am trying to use Cucumber.JS to do my automated testing. If I do the following...
var sharedSteps = module.exports = function(){
this.World = require("../support/world.js").World;
this.When(/^I click on the cart$/, function(next) {
this.client.click("#cartLink", function(err, res){
});
});
...
}
Scenario: Make sure clicking on the cart works
Given I go on the website "https://site.com/"
When I click on the cart
Then I should be on the cart page
Everything works, however, if I do the following using And
var sharedSteps = module.exports = function(){
this.World = require("../support/world.js").World;
this.And(/^I click on the cart$/, function(next) {
this.client.click("#cartLink", function(err, res){
});
});
...
}
Scenario: Make sure clicking on the cart works
Given I go on the website "https://site.com/"
And I click on the cart
Then I should be on the cart page
I get
TypeError: Object # has no method 'And'
So what is the proper way to do this (Without saying you should be using when anyway because I have other scenarios that are not so simple)
I ended up being able to use And in the Gherkin and use this.When

Dispatch Express.js route based on first parameter?

I'm creating a CMS in node.js and Express. I allow users to create their own subsections in the site. A subsection can be a blog, a page or a forum. These sub-sections can be installed one level deep in the site url path, so for instance:
domain.com/custom-path-blog/
I would have to support the following url structure with express routes:
domain.com/custom-path-blog/ -> blog index
domain.com/custom-path-blog/page/5 -> list posts on page 5
domain.com/custom-path-blog/guides/ -> list posts that belong to guides category
domain.com/custom-path-blog/guides/this-is-a-post -> shows a post
I would also have to support other sub-sections with different url structures. I have to make a call to a database to check out what the first level in the url actually is before I can dispatch it to the appropriate route.
Since this is a saaas website I dont want to dynamically register the routes on my node process as I could end up having thousands of users with possibly millions of routes. This is not doable. I have to go to the database for that first chunk of information.
Once I know a sub section is a blog or a forum or a e-commerce store how do I send the url past that "custom-path-blog" to be processed by the appropriate express routing mechanism?
I'm starting to think this might be too complicated to do with express routes and I will have to do it by hand.
Thanks!
If you have already have 3 separated apps (page, blog, forum), and you want to launch it in 1 node process you can do this:
app.use('/page', pageApp);
app.use('/blog', blogApp);
app.use('/forum', forumApp);
express will strip out the first component of url for you.
In your case, the first component is customize by user, so you need to write a middleware for it:
function appSelector(req, res, next) {
var firstComponent = getFirtCompoent(req.url.pathname) // return page or blog ...
var userID = req.user.id;
detectAppForCurrentUser(firstCompoent, userID, function (type) {
if(type === 'page') {
removeFirstComponent(req);
return pageApp(req, res, next);
}
if(type === 'blog') {
removeFirstComponent(req);
return blogApp(req, res, next);
}
next(); // if not found continue with other routes
}
}
app.use(appSelector);
// TODO other routes here
there are many way to solve problem, but is it important rule: app.use, app.get are called on initialization phase only

AngularJS and ExpressJS session management?

I would like to keep session across all the page. For this project, I am using expressJs, nodeJS as server side. AngularJS in front end.
I am not sure, how to handle session when view changes or url changes. Because I need to take care of both expressJS router or angularJs router.
What approach should I follow?
angularJS router
myApp.config(['$routeProvider', function($routeProvider) {
$routeProvider.when('/welcome', {templateUrl: 'partials/welcome.html', controller: 'MyCtrl2'});
$routeProvider.when('/login', {templateUrl: 'partials/login.html', controller: 'MyCtrl2'});
$routeProvider.when('/signup', {templateUrl: 'partials/signup.html', controller: 'singupController'});
$routeProvider.otherwise({redirectTo: '/'});
}]);
Signup controller
myApp.controller('singupController',function($scope,$rootScope,$http){
$scope.doSingnup = function() {
var formData = {
'username' : this.username,
'password' : this.password,
'email' : null
};
var jdata = JSON.stringify(formData);
$http({method:'POST',url:'/signup',data:jdata})
.success(function(data,status,headers,config){
console.log(data);
}).
error(function(data,status,headers,config){
console.log(data)
});
}
})
ExpressJS router
module.exports = exports = function(app, db) {
var sessionHandler = new SessionHandler(db);
var contentHandler = new ContentHandler(db);
// Middleware to see if a user is logged in
app.use(sessionHandler.isLoggedInMiddleware);
app.get('/', contentHandler.displayMainPage);
app.post('/login', sessionHandler.handleLoginRequest);
app.get('/logout', sessionHandler.displayLogoutPage);
app.get("/welcome", sessionHandler.displayWelcomePage);
app.post('/signup', sessionHandler.handleSignup);
app.get('*', contentHandler.displayMainPage);
// Error handling middleware
app.use(ErrorHandler);
}
After signup, I would like to redirect to the login page. How can I do that in the above router. which one of the following should I use to change the view of app
1) $location of angularJS
2) redirect of ExpressJS
So i had the same problem and to be fair i might have read the approach somewhere i don't remember anymore.
Problem: Angular builds single page apps. After refresh, you loose scope and with it the authenticated user.
Approach
AngularJS modules offer a startup function called run which is called always when the page is loaded. Perfect for refresh/reload.
myApp.run(function ($rootScope, $location, myFactory) {
$http.get('/confirm-login')
.success(function (user) {
if (user && user.userId) {
$rootScope.user = user;
}
});
}
express-session saves the sessions for you and authenticates you with the sessionId your browser sends. So it always knows if you are authenticated or not.
router.get('/confirm-login', function (req, res) {
res.send(req.user)
}
);
All i had to do is, after refreshing and all dependencies were loaded, ask if i am authenticated and set $rootScope.user = authenticatedUserFromExpress;
There are two different concepts here - server side session state and the user state on the client side in Angular. In express you can use the session via req.session to manage session based data.
On the angular side, there is only scope in your controllers. If you want to keep track of some data across multiple controllers, you need to create a service to store the data in and inject the service into the controllers you need.
A typical lifecycle is to first check if there is data already in the service, if so use it. If not, wait for the data to be populated (by the user or app or whatever) then detect those changes and synchronize with your service.
signup controller
function SignupCtrl($scope, $http, $location) {
$scope.form = {}; // to capture data in form
$scope.errorMessage = ''; // to display error msg if have any
$scope.submitPost = function() { // this is to submit your form can't do on
//traditional way because it against angularjs SPA
$http.post('/signup', $scope.form).
success(function(data) { // if success then redirect to "/" status code 200
$location.path('/');
}).error(function(err) { // if error display error message status code 400
// the form can't be submitted until get the status code 200
$scope.errorMessage = err;
});
};
}
sessionHandler.handleSignup
this.handleSignup = function(req, res, next) {
"use strict";
// if you have a validate function pass the data from your
// Signup controller to the function in my case is validateSignup
// req.body is what you need
validateSignup(req.body, function(error, data) {
if(error) {
res.send(400, error.message); // if error send error message to angularjs
}else {
// do something else
// rmb to res.send(200)
}
});
}
validatesignup
function validateSignup(data,callback) {
"use strict"; // the data is req.body
//so now you can access your data on your form
// e.g you have 2 fields name="password" and name="confirmPassword on your form"
var pass = data.password,
comPass = data.confirmPassword;
if(pass != comPass){
callback(new Error('Password must match'), null);
// then show the error msg on the form by using
//angular ng-if like <div ng-if="errorMessage">{{errorMessage}}</div>
}else{
callback(null, data);
}
}
hope this help
Of all the answers here, I like #alknows's approach best. However, like the other answers that suggest you send a request to the server to get the current user data, there are a couple issues I take with them:
You have to deal with race conditions as a result of your AJAX ($http) call.
You're sending an unnecessary request to the server after it already rendered your index.html
I tried #alknow's approach and it worked out for me after I was able to resolve the many race conditions that came up as a result of my angular app controllers and config needing the current user to do their job. I try my best to avoid race conditions when appropriate, so I was a bit reluctant to continue with this approach. So I thought of a better approach: send the current user data down with your index.html and store it locally.
My Approach: Embed currentUser in index.html & store locally on client
In index.html on your server, make a script tag to hold whatever data you want to pass to the client:
```
<!--YOUR OTHER index.html stuff go above here-->
<script id="server-side-rendered-client-data" type="text/javascript">
var __ssr__CData = {
currentUser: { id: '12345', username: 'coolguy', etc: 'etc.' }
}
</script>
```
Then, as #alknows suggested, in app.js or wherever you initiate your angular app, add app.run(..., () => {...}). In app.run(), you will want to grab the server side rendered client data object, which I named obscurely __ssr_CData so that I am less likely to run into name collisions across the global namespace later in my other javascript:
var myAngularApp = angular.module("mainApp", ['ngRoute']);
myAngularApp.run(function ($rootScope) {
const currentUserFromServer = __ssr__CData.currentUser
const currentUserAccessTokenFromServer = __ssr__CData.accessToken
const currentUser =
CurrentUser.set(currentUserAccessTokenFromServer, currentUserFromServer)
$rootScope.currentUser = currentUser
});
As you know app.run() will be called whenever the page does a full reload. CurrentUser is a global class for managing my angular app's current user in the single page environment. So when I call CurrentUser.set(...) it stores the current user data in a place I can retrieve later in my angular app by calling CurrentUser.get(). So in any of your angular app controller's you can now retrieve the current user the server provided by simply doing this:
myAngularApp.controller('loginController',function($scope, $rootScope, $http){
//check if the user is already logged in:
var currentUser = CurrentUser.get()
if(currentUser) {
alert("HEY! You're already logged in as " +currentUser.username)
return $window.location.href = "/";
}
//there is no current user, so let user log in
//...
}
In that example, I made use of CurrentUser.get(), which I explained above, to get the previously stored current user from the server. I could have also retrieved that current user by accessing $rootScope.currentUser because I stored it there, too. It's up to you.
myAngularApp.controller('signupController',function($scope, $rootScope, $http){
//check if the user is already logged in:
var currentUser = CurrentUser.get()
if(currentUser) {
alert("HEY! You're already logged in as " +currentUser.username)
return $window.location.href = "/";
}
//there is no current user, so let user signup
//... you run your signup code after getting form data
$http({method:'POST',url:'/signup',data:jdata})
.success(function(data,status,headers,config){
//signup succeeded!
//set the current user locally just like in app.js
CurrentUser.set(data.newUser)
//send user to profile
return $window.location.href = "/profile";
})
.error(function(data,status,headers,config){
//something went wrong
console.log(data)
});
}
Now, after a new user has signed up, your server returned the new user from the AJAX call. We set that new user as the current user by calling CurrentUser.set(...) and send the user to their profile. You can now get the current user in the profile controller the same way you did to check if the current user existed in the login and signup controllers.
I hope this helps anyone who comes across this. For your reference, I'm using the client-sessions module to handle sessions on my server.

How to create global variables accessible in all views using Express / Node.JS?

Ok, so I have built a blog using Jekyll and you can define variables in a file _config.yml which are accessible in all of the templates/layouts. I am currently using Node.JS / Express with EJS templates and ejs-locals (for partials/layouts. I am looking to do something similar to the global variables like site.title that are found in _config.yml if anyone is familiar with Jekyll. I have variables like the site's title, (rather than page title), author/company name, which stay the same on all of my pages.
Here is an example of what I am currently doing.:
exports.index = function(req, res){
res.render('index', {
siteTitle: 'My Website Title',
pageTitle: 'The Root Splash Page',
author: 'Cory Gross',
description: 'My app description',
indexSpecificData: someData
});
};
exports.home = function (req, res) {
res.render('home', {
siteTitle: 'My Website Title',
pageTitle: 'The Home Page',
author: 'Cory Gross',
description: 'My app description',
homeSpecificData: someOtherData
});
};
I would like to be able to define variables like my site's title, description, author, etc in one place and have them accessible in my layouts/templates through EJS without having to pass them as options to each call to res.render. Is there a way to do this and still allow me to pass in other variables specific to each page?
After having a chance to study the Express 3 API Reference a bit more I discovered what I was looking for. Specifically the entries for app.locals and then a bit farther down res.locals held the answers I needed.
I discovered for myself that the function app.locals takes an object and stores all of its properties as global variables scoped to the application. These globals are passed as local variables to each view. The function res.locals, however, is scoped to the request and thus, response local variables are accessible only to the view(s) rendered during that particular request/response.
So for my case in my app.js what I did was add:
app.locals({
site: {
title: 'ExpressBootstrapEJS',
description: 'A boilerplate for a simple web application with a Node.JS and Express backend, with an EJS template with using Twitter Bootstrap.'
},
author: {
name: 'Cory Gross',
contact: 'CoryG89#gmail.com'
}
});
Then all of these variables are accessible in my views as site.title, site.description, author.name, author.contact.
I could also define local variables for each response to a request with res.locals, or simply pass variables like the page's title in as the optionsparameter in the render call.
EDIT: This method will not allow you to use these locals in your middleware. I actually did run into this as Pickels suggests in the comment below. In this case you will need to create a middleware function as such in his alternative (and appreciated) answer. Your middleware function will need to add them to res.locals for each response and then call next. This middleware function will need to be placed above any other middleware which needs to use these locals.
EDIT: Another difference between declaring locals via app.locals and res.locals is that with app.locals the variables are set a single time and persist throughout the life of the application. When you set locals with res.locals in your middleware, these are set everytime you get a request. You should basically prefer setting globals via app.locals unless the value depends on the request req variable passed into the middleware. If the value doesn't change then it will be more efficient for it to be set just once in app.locals.
You can do this by adding them to the locals object in a general middleware.
app.use(function (req, res, next) {
res.locals = {
siteTitle: "My Website's Title",
pageTitle: "The Home Page",
author: "Cory Gross",
description: "My app's description",
};
next();
});
Locals is also a function which will extend the locals object rather than overwriting it. So the following works as well
res.locals({
siteTitle: "My Website's Title",
pageTitle: "The Home Page",
author: "Cory Gross",
description: "My app's description",
});
Full example
var app = express();
var middleware = {
render: function (view) {
return function (req, res, next) {
res.render(view);
}
},
globalLocals: function (req, res, next) {
res.locals({
siteTitle: "My Website's Title",
pageTitle: "The Root Splash Page",
author: "Cory Gross",
description: "My app's description",
});
next();
},
index: function (req, res, next) {
res.locals({
indexSpecificData: someData
});
next();
}
};
app.use(middleware.globalLocals);
app.get('/', middleware.index, middleware.render('home'));
app.get('/products', middleware.products, middleware.render('products'));
I also added a generic render middleware. This way you don't have to add res.render to each route which means you have better code reuse. Once you go down the reusable middleware route you'll notice you will have lots of building blocks which will speed up development tremendously.
For Express 4.0 I found that using application level variables works a little differently & Cory's answer did not work for me.
From the docs: http://expressjs.com/en/api.html#app.locals
I found that you could declare a global variable for the app in
app.locals
e.g
app.locals.baseUrl = "http://www.google.com"
And then in your application you can access these variables & in your express middleware you can access them in the req object as
req.app.locals.baseUrl
e.g.
console.log(req.app.locals.baseUrl)
//prints out http://www.google.com
In your app.js you need add something like this
global.myvar = 100;
Now, in all your files you want use this variable, you can just access it as myvar
One way to do this by updating the app.locals variable for that app in app.js
Set via following
var app = express();
app.locals.appName = "DRC on FHIR";
Get / Access
app.listen(3000, function () {
console.log('[' + app.locals.appName + '] => app listening on port 3001!');
});
Elaborating with a screenshot from #RamRovi example with slight enhancement.
you can also use "global"
Example:
declare like this :
app.use(function(req,res,next){
global.site_url = req.headers.host; // hostname = 'localhost:8080'
next();
});
Use like this:
in any views or ejs file
<%
console.log(site_url);
%>
in js files
console.log(site_url);
With the differents answers, I implemented this code to use an external file JSON loaded in "app.locals"
Parameters
{
"web": {
"title" : "Le titre de ma Page",
"cssFile" : "20200608_1018.css"
}
}
Application
var express = require('express');
var appli = express();
var serveur = require('http').Server(appli);
var myParams = require('./include/my_params.json');
var myFonctions = require('./include/my_fonctions.js');
appli.locals = myParams;
EJS Page
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="fr">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title><%= web.title %></title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/<%= web.cssFile %>">
</head>
</body>
</html>
Hoping it will help
What I do in order to avoid having a polluted global scope is to create a script that I can include anywhere.
// my-script.js
const ActionsOverTime = require('#bigteam/node-aot').ActionsOverTime;
const config = require('../../config/config').actionsOverTime;
let aotInstance;
(function () {
if (!aotInstance) {
console.log('Create new aot instance');
aotInstance = ActionsOverTime.createActionOverTimeEmitter(config);
}
})();
exports = aotInstance;
Doing this will only create a new instance once and share that everywhere where the file is included. I am not sure if it is because the variable is cached or of it because of an internal reference mechanism for the application (that might include caching). Any comments on how node resolves this would be great.
Maybe also read this to get the gist on how require works:
http://fredkschott.com/post/2014/06/require-and-the-module-system/

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