marionette.enhancedController

Brought to you by Use All Five, Inc.

Author: Justin Anastos <janastos@useallfive.com>
Author URI: [http://www.useallfive.com](http://www.useallfive.com)
Repository: https://github.com/UseAllFive/marionette.enhancedController

Extend Marionette.Controller in place to allow for region management and debugging.

Many thanks to Brian Mann's Backbone Rails: Loading Views for the logic and the base code used to create this module.

Annotated Source

Installation

• Include lib/marionette.enhancedController.js before any Marionette.Controllers are used

  The original Marionette.Controller will be modified and Marionette.Controller will be set to the modified version. This will work in place as long as you include this file before any Marionette.Controllers are defined.

• Optional: Include css to render the loading views. Example:

  .loading-container {
      min-height: 200px;
      position: relative;
      width: 100%;
  }
  
  .loading-container > .spinner {
      left: 50% !important;
      position: absolute !important;
      top: 50% !important;
  }

## Usage

### Region Management

Whenever you create a `Marionette.Controller` instance, pass it a `region`
option that specifies the `Marionette.Region` you wish to draw your
controller's view on. In the controller, call `this.show(yourView)` (usually
in the `initialize` function) to display `yourView` in the specified
`region`. When the view is removed, the controller will automatically be
closed.

Note: As of Marionette v2, you cannot show views that have been shown and
removed. Keep this in mind.

```js
var Controller
var controller;

// Define controller
Controller = Marionette.Controller.extend({
  initialize: function() {
    // Instantiate a view
    var view = new Marionette.ItemView({ ... });

    // Show the view
    this.show(view);
  }
});

// Instantiate controller
controller = new Controlller({
  region: yourRegion
});

Loading Views

If you would like to show a loading view while entities load, add the following option to the .show command inside the controller:

this.show(view, {
    loading: true
});

Note: You must have attached the entities models and collections to the view you want to show and have executed fetch on them before calling this.show() or the loading view will not know what to wait for.

Custom Entities

The loading view will automatically wait for any models or controllers that have had fetch run on them to load and then will display the original view. You can manually specify the entities that must load, but they must all have had fetch run on them already:

// Single entity
var model = new Backbone.Model({ ... });
model.fetch();

this.show(view, {
    entities: model,
    loading: true,
    loadingType: 'opacity'
});

// Multiple entities
var model1 = new Backbone.Model({ ... });
var model2 = new Backbone.Model({ ... });
model1.fetch();
model2.fetch();

this.show(view, {
    entities: [model1, model2],
    loading: true,
    loadingType: 'opacity'
});

Opacity Loading View

The default loading view is a spinner (spinjs), but can be customized to show the original view with an opacity of 0.5 instead:

this.show(view, {
    loading: true,
    loadingType: 'opacity'
});

Debugging

From the console, you can view the Marionette.Controllers that have been created by looking at Marionette.Controller._registry. To verify that controllers that have been instiated in the lifetime of the application, call Marionette.Controller._resetRegistry(). This will attempt to close down all controllers in the registry. If they are not removed from the registry (their close was not captured), then you have a memory leak.