Client-side hierarchical routing library supporting optional views.
Marbles is a flexible, framework-agnostic, client-side routing library.
Features:
- Event-driven interface
- Optional route segments/fragments
- Hierarchical routes
Why did I take the time and effort to write yet another routing library? Seriously, there are so. many.
Well, why do people usually reinvent the wheel?
- To learn
- Because the wheel doesn't do something they need
While learning was a nice side effect of having done this project, my main reason was that I couldn't find any routers that did what I needed. Granted, I didn't read the docs for all 13,771 (as of this writing) other routers, but I read the docs for some of the top ones and couldn't find what I needed.
What did I need?
I needed this:
- Click "User Profile". Route changes to
/users/1/profile - Click "New Message". Route changes to
/users/1/profile/new-message - Click "View Messages". Route changes to
/users/1/profile/new-message/view-messages - Close the "New Message" form. Route changes to
/users/1/profile/view-messages
See what happened there? The new-message fragment came before the view-messages fragment, but when you closed the "New Messages" form, only the new-messages fragment was removed from the route. Not convinced this is special? Let's continue with this example.
- Reopen the "New Message" form. Route changes to
/users/1/profile/new-message/view-messages - Collapse the messages list. Route changes to
/users/1/profile/new-message.
Ah! Both view-message and new-message are optional. Furthermore, and this might not be immediately apparent from the example, they can only appear if certain conditions are met (they'll only be shown if the users/:id and profile bits are in the route).
So there it is. You could specify this same sequence of routes with other common routing libraries, for example, in an Express-ish library, it would look something like this:
route('/users/:id/profile', () => ...);
route('/users/:id/profile/new-message', () => ...);
route('/users/:id/profile/view-messages', () => ...);
route('/users/:id/profile/new-message/view-message)
In such a library, you have to list every possible combination. That's not too bad with this limited example, but imagine if profile were optional as well.
There are more flexible libraries, of course, like the wonderful UI Router. But you'll notice that the tutorials only describe working with frameworks like Angular and React. That's excellent, if you're working with those frameworks, but for the rare few of us who work at places that use more arcane tools, we can't use it without great difficulty.
So there you have it. Why did I make this?
- I needed something very flexible
- I needed something framework agnostic
If you need those things too, maybe Marbles is for you!
Currently, because I've been so busy working on this library, I haven't had the time or motivation to figure out how to publish this project to NPM and Bower and get semantic-release and all the tools working together correctly. Therefore, to install...
Download the minified or regular source and include it in a script tag at the bottom of your HTML <body>:
<script src="./marbles.min.js"></script>
Then, in your code, create the router and set it up like this:
var router = new Marbles({
// segment definitions -- see below
});
// The hashchange event doesn't fire on window load. Calling `step()` forces the hash route to be evaluated by Marbles.
router.step();
// Listen for hashchange events.
router.start();
You specify segments as an adjacency list.
var segments = {
// 'root' is REQUIRED
'root': {
// and it should always be active
active: true,
// root has no segment (though it can, if you want it to!)
segment: '',
// 'root' is strong and independent, like Katy Perry
dependency: '',
// This is an XOR'd list of children.
// That means that root can be followed by 'home' XOR 'about' XOR 'blog'
children: ['home', 'about', 'blog'],
data: {}
},
'home': {
// when loading the page without a hashroute, it will automatically direct to '#home' because this is active and root is active.
active: true,
// do not include leading or trailing slashes
segment: 'home',
// can't build a home without setting down ROOTS!
dependency: 'root',
children: [],
data: {}
},
'about': {
active: false,
segment: 'about',
dependency: 'root',
children: [
'founder'
],
data: {}
},
'blog': {
active: false,
segment: 'about',
dependency: 'root',
children: [],
data: {}
},
'founder': {
active: false,
segment: 'our-founder',
dependency: 'about',
children: ['employees'],
data: {}
},
'employees': {
active: false,
segment: 'employees',
// Specifying 'about' as the dependency means that we can remove 'founder' and 'employees' will still stick around, as long as 'about' is present in the route.
// That means that 'founder' is an optional segment! Notice that since 'employees' is a child of 'founder', if 'founder' is present, it will _always_ come before 'employees'.
dependency: 'about',
children: [],
data: {}
}
};
The keys are IDs, and the nested objects are segment configs. That is, in example above, 'home' is the ID of a segment, and its config is
{
active: true,
segment: 'home',
dependency: 'root',
children: []
}
Segments consist of a configuration object and an ID. In the route configuration, you specify the ID as a string key, and the configuration object as an object value mapped to a key.
You may specify the following options on segment configs:
{
// (Required) Whether this segment is active initially.
active: <Boolean>
// (Required) The actual segment to place in the hash route. Omit leading and trailing slashes.
segment: <String>
// (Required) Specifies what segment this segment must descend from.
dependency: <String>,
// (Required) A list of segment IDs that are direct descendants of this segment. These children are XOR'd, meaning only one child may be present in the hash route at a time. In tree terminology, they are on the same level.
children: Array<String>
// (Required) An object specifying what data to provide the route. Normally this will be empty, unless you want to hardcode some data.
// It is useful for segments with dynamic tokens (more on that below).
data: {}
}
Segments may specify dynamic tokens in their segment strings. Example:
{
active: false,
// `:userId` is a dynamic token.
segment: 'users/:userId'
dependency: 'root',
children: [],
// the `data` object can be used
// to provide default values
data: {
userId: 1
}
}
Notice the use of the data object. You would almost never do this, so it's a contrived example. Instead, you set the data by using the insert() method. See the API section for details.
Warning: There is a BUG (🐛) that prevents multiple dynamic tokens in a single segment from working correctly. This is being worked on.
Marbles exposes an event-driven interface.
This method can be used to subscribe to events. It returns true if the subscription was successful, or false otherwise.
subscriptions should be an object of the following form:
{
<segment_id>: {
inserted: function(data) {
// do something
},
removed: function() {
// do something
}
}
}
Both the inserted and removed keys are optional, though you should provide at least one for every segment to which you are subscribing (otherwise what's the point?).
The function registered under inserted is fired every time the segment under watch is inserted. It is passed a data object, which is a key-value map of all dynamic token data stored in the route up to that segment.
The function registered under removed is fired every time the segment under watch is removed. It is not passed anything.
Example:
m.subscribe({
'user': {
// fired on .insert('user', ...) calls
inserted: function(data) {
console.log('Route for user #' + data.userId + ' activated!');
// note that data will have any other
// dynamic tokens from segments preceeding 'user' as well
someView.show();
},
// fired on .remove('user') calls
removed: function() {
console.log('User route deactivated.');
someView.hide();
}
}
});
Use this method to remove subscriptions. The parameters are as follows:
- segmentId - ID of the segment whose listener you want to remove
- event - Name of event whose listener want you to remove. Can be either 'inserted' or 'removed'.
- handler - The handler function you provided in your
subscribe()config.
This method will return false if removal was unsuccessful (for example, if a bad parameter is passed), otherwise it will return an array of removed listeners.
Example:
const handler = function doSomething(data) {
...
};
// first, subscribe to an event
m.subscribe({
'home': {
inserted: handler
}
});
// unsubscribe!
m.unsubscribe('home', 'inserted', handler);
This method is chainable.
step() takes a snapshot of the current window.location.hash and fires any listeners that have been registered with subscribe(). The snapshot is recorded and is used as the previous state the next time step() is called. Note that internally, start() simply calls step() every time the hashchange event fires.
Normally, you don't want to call step() directly, BUT you should always call it once after router instantiation. Why? So you can fire listeners for the initial state of the hash route, which isn't captured by start() because hashchange doesn't fire on page load.
Examples:
-
On router instantiation:
const m = new Marbles(...); m.subscribe(...); // add listeners m.step(); // fire listeners for initial hash route. m.start(); // listen for further hashchange events. -
Assume
window.location.hash=users/1/profile/details, and also that there are listeners for every segment in the given hash.step(); // fires listeners
This method is chainable.
Listens for hashchange events and fires listeners added using subscribe() on said events. Unless you need fine-grained control of when your event listeners fire, you should always call this method when setting up Marbles, AFTER a single call to step().
Example:
// instantiate marbles
const m = new Marbles(...);
// set up some listeners
m.subscribe({
'home': {
inserted: () => {
console.log('Honey, I\'m home!');
}
}
});
// assume window.location.hash = ''
// call step() to handle initial hashroute.
m.step();
// finally, call start() to listen for hashchange events.
m.start();
// assume window.location.hash changes to 'home'
// "Honey, I'm home!"
This method is chainable.
Stop Marbles from listening to hashchange events.
Example:
m.stop();
This method is chainable.
When insert() is called, Marbles attempts to insert the given segment with the provided data into the hash route. Whether this is successful depends on the route configuration.
NOTE: insert() only updates the hashroute.
To ensure your listeners are fired, use step() or start().
Examples:
-
Insert the 'home' segment:
m.insert('home'); -
Insert the 'user' segment, and pass it a
userIdof1. Assuming 'user' has the segment 'users/:userId', the dynamic token:userIdwill be replaced with1.m.insert('user', { userId: 1 });
This method is chainable.
This method removes a segment from the hash route. This will update window.location.hash but will NOT fire any listeners by default. To fire the listeners, ensure you've already called start(), or call step() immediately after calling remove().
Examples:
-
Remove the 'home' segment:
m.remove('home'); -
Remove the
usersegment. Notice that no data needs to be passed when removing a segment.`m.remove('user');
Call this method to retrieve all the data from the dynamic tokens in the active hashroute.
Example:
Assume the hashroute is users/1/cars/2/details and Marbles is configured with the following segment definitions:
{
'root': {
active: true,
children: ['user'],
data: {},
dependency: '',
segment: ''
},
'user': {
active: false,
children: ['car'],
data: {},
dependency: 'root',
segment: 'users/:userId'
},
'car': {
active: false,
children: ['car-details'],
data: {},
dependency: 'user',
segment: 'cars/:carId'
},
'car-details': {
active: false,
children: [],
data: {},
dependency: 'car',
segment: 'details'
}
}
m.getData(); // ->
{
userId: 1,
carId: 2
}
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