Chaplin.Layout is the top-level application “view”. It doesn't inherit from Chaplin.View but borrows some of its functionalities. It is tied to the document DOM element and handles app-wide events, such as clicks on application-internal links. Most importantly, when a new controller is activated, Chaplin.Layout is responsible for changing the main view to the view of the new controller.

Methods

initialize([options={}])

• options:
  • routeLinks (default 'a, .go-to'): the selector of elements you want to apply internal routing to. Set to false to deactivate internal routing. If falsey, chaplin won’t route links at all.
  • skipRouting (default '.noscript'): if you want to skip the internal routing in some situation. Can take the following value:
    • selector: check if the activated link matches the selector. The default value is a selector and will prevent routing for any links with class noscript.
    • function: check the return value. Return true to continue routing, return false to stop routing. The path and the elements are passed as parameters. Example: function(href, el) { return href == 'bla'; }
    • false: never skip routing
  • openExternalToBlank (default false): whether or not links to external domains should open in a new window/tab.
  • scrollTo (default [0, 0]): the coordinates (x, y) you want to scroll to on view replacement. Set to false to deactivate it.
  • titleTemplate (default _.template("<%= subtitle %> - <%= title %>")): a function which returns the document title. Per default, it receives an object with the properties title and subtitle.

delegateEvents([events])

A wrapper for Backbone.View.delegateEvents. See Backbone documentation for more details.

undelegateEvents()

A wrapper for Backbone.View.undelegateEvents. See Backbone documentation for more details.

hideOldView(controller)

Hide the active (old) view on the beforeControllerDispose event sent by the dispatcher on route change and scroll to the coordinates specified by the initialize scrollTo option.

showNewView(context)

Show the new view on the dispatcher:dispatch event sent by the dispatcher on route change.

adjustTitle(context)

Adjust the title of the page based on the titleTemplate option. The title variable is the one defined at application level, the subtitle the one defined at controller level.

openLink(event)

Open the href or data-href URL of a DOM element. When openLink is called it checks if the href is valid and runs the skipRouting function if set by the user. If the href is valid, it checks if it is an external link and depending on the openExternalToBlank option, opens it in a new window. Finally, if it is an internal link, it starts routing the URL.

Usage

App-wide events

To register app-wide events, you can define them in the events hash. It works like Backbone.View.delegateEvent on the document DOM element.

Route links internally

If you want to route links internally, you can use the events hash with the openLink function like so:

events:
  'click a': 'openLink'

events: {
  'click a': 'openLink'
}

To open all external links (different hostname) in a new window, you can set openExternalLinksInNewWindow to true when initializing Chaplin.Layout in your Application:

class MyApplication extends Chaplin.Application
  initialize: ->
    # ...
    @initLayout openExternalLinksInNewWindow: true

var MyApplication = Chaplin.Application.extend({
  initialize: function() {
    // ...
    this.initLayout({openExternalLinksInNewWindow: true});
  }
});

To add a custom check whether or not a link should be open internally, you can override the isExternalLink method:

class Layout extends Chaplin.Layout
  isExternalLink: (href) -> # some test on the href variable

var Layout = Chaplin.Layout.extend({
  isExternalLink: function(href) {} // some test on the href variable
});

View loading

There is nothing to do, the Layout is listening to the beforeControllerDispose and dispatcher:dispatch and will trigger the function when a new route is called. If you are not happy with the site scrolling to the top of the page on each view load, you can set the scrollTo option when initializing Chaplin.Layout in your Application:

class MyApplication extends Chaplin.Application

  initialize: ->
    # ...
    @initLayout
      scrollTo: [10, 30] # will scroll to x=10px and y=30px.
      # OR
      scrollTo: false    # deactivate the scroll

var MyApplication = Chaplin.Application.extend({
  initialize: function() {
    // ...
    this.initLayout({
      scrollTo: [10, 30] // will scroll to x=10px and y=30px.
      // OR
      scrollTo: false    // deactivate the scroll
    });
  }
});