backbone routes, creating a faux route?

Question

I not sure if I have used the technical term, or so I will describe what I am wanting to do with my backbone routes. In my application a user logs into a dashboard and they can see all the activity that is related to them, clicking on an activity link create modal for them to edit that activity.

On landing in the dashboard the URL is http://app.dev/#dashboard on clicking a link I want the modal to overlay the dashboard, but for the URL to change to http://app.dev/#activity/edit/:id without losing the activity view that should site behind model, currently the app navigations to edit route and re-renders everything, is there another way to preserve a view but change the URL?

Answer 1

You need to create a subview which will render the edit view (or just create an overlay popup). Either way, you cannot do this using a <a href> tag, but you will need to do this via javascript.

Backbone.js has a way for you to easily navigate through routes using:

router.navigate(fragment, options) - see Backbone Navigate

Using {trigger:true} you can call the router function (which is basically what happens now) and that will re-render the view using the router function (as if the user landed on that page). By default, and if you pass {trigger:false}, Backbone will only change your url, but will not trigger the router function, so it will be transparent to the user, besides the fact that will see the url change, and he can see the change in his history (if you used Backbone.history.start())

Bottom line: To just change the url, without going through router, call router.navigate(requestedUrl, { trigger: false}) and don't forget to actually show him the new view (popup, overlay, nested view, etc...)