Blinx Router

Blinx Router is a wrapper over Router5 following philosophy of Blinx. Blinx Router exposes only the methods/properties required in building a typical single page Blinx application.

Installation

Blinx Router distributables are available inside "dist" directory. And it can be included in any html using script tag as:

<script src="//raw.githubusercontent.com/blinxjs/blinx-router/master/dist/router.min.js"></script>

This way it will make BlinxRouter available globally. All the methods and properties of Blinx Router can be accessed over default property of BlinxRouter. Example:

BlinxRouter.default.init(BlinxJs);

Blinx Router is available over npm also. It can be installed using npm as

npm install blinx-router --save

Which can be accessed as

import BlinxRouter from "blinx-router";

Usage

To start using Blinx Router, these basic steps are required:

// Require Blinx Router
import BlinxRouter from "blinx-router";

// Initialize Router
BlinxRouter.init(BlinxJs);

// Configure Router
BlinxRouter.configure(routeMap, routerOptions);

// Start Router
BlinxRouter.start();

APIs

init: function

To intiliaze router, BlinxJs needs to be passed.

	BlinxRouter.init(BlinxJs);

configure: function

Accepts two parameters

1. Routes Config. Route needs to be defined as flat array of routes. Nested route names need to have their full name specified.

[
    { name: 'users',      path: '/users', moduleConfig: {}},
    { name: 'users.view', path: '/list', moduleConfig: {}},
    { name: 'users.list', path: '/view', moduleConfig: {}}
];

• "name" and "path" are the mandatory attributes and should be unique for every route.
• "moduleConfig" is the configuration of module which should be passed to BlinxJs to create instance. Its structure and its should be same as BlinxJs expects.
• If shouldRender method is present over the module then the method is called before rendering the module with toRoute and fromRoute in params. If the value returned is false then the rendering does not happen. shouldRender is an optional property over module.
• If shouldDestroy method is present over the module then the method is called before destroying the module with toRoute and fromRoute in params. If the value returned is false then the destory does not happen. shouldDestroy is an optional property over module.

2. Router Options to control the behaviour of router. Sample config:

{
        useHash: true,
        hashPrefix: '!',
        defaultRoute: 'home',
        defaultParams: {},
        base: '',
        trailingSlash: false,
        autoCleanUp: true,
        strictQueryParams: true,
        logger: false,
        history: false,
        listener: false
}

• Use of hash part of URL - Set useHash to true if you want the paths of your routes to be prefixed with a hash. You can also choose a hashPrefix which will be inserted between the path of a route and the hash. Those options will mostly be used by plugins such as router5-history.

• Default route - When your router instance starts, it will navigate to a default route if such route is defined and if it cannot match the URL against a known route:

• Default params - the default route params (defaults to {})

• Base path - You can specify what the base path of your application is. By default base is set to an empty string, meaning your route paths won't be prefixed by any path.

• Optional trailing slashes - By default, the router is in "strict match" mode. If you want trailing slashes to be optional, you can set trailingSlash to a truthy value.

• Automatic clean up - If autoCleanUp is set to true, the router will automatically clear canDeactivate functions / booleans when their associated segment becomes inactive.

• Strict query parameters - Query parameters are optional, meaning a route can still be matched if a query parameter defined in its path is not present. However, if extra query parameters are present in the path which is being matched, matching will fail. If you want the router to still match routes if extra query parameters are present, set strictQueryParams to false.

• logger - Enable router logger using logger plugin.

• history - Enable history using history plugin.

• listener - Enable listener using listener plugin.

reRegister: function

This function can be used to add more routes once router has been initialized. This accepts the falt route array in param and it should not duplicate any route which has been already registered.

start: function

To start the router. This method does not require any parameter.

stop: function

To stop router once router has been started.

getRouteParams: function

Returns the route parameters. Both url and query params.

getCurrentRoute: function

Returns name and path along with current route params.