Question

I am building a news reader in Sencha Touch 2. There is a “share” button in this news reader, but I’m not sure how you would share the current article via a URL.

That is, if my Sencha site’s URL is: http://www.senchareader.com, the only URL I can share is just that.

Is there some way to create, within the Sencha framework, something like, http://www.senchareader.com/article1234567 ? So that when the URL is clicked on by someone, it actually goes to the article that’s being shared?

Hopefully this is clear, let me know if it’s not.

Answer 1

Yes you can. Sencha uses URL hashes to support browser history. Take a look at this example on the ExtJS 4.1.3 site, and the related documentation here. Essentially, you add “tokens” (hashes) to the history, then listen for changes to support the forward and back buttons. If you are using Sencha Touch 2, however, history support is a bit easier by using “routes” in your controllers. You read Sencha Touch history support documentation here.

The code to do this differs depending on whether you are using ExtJS or Sencha Touch, but is ExtJS it is something like the following:

...
Ext.History.init();
...
// something happens to change the url (like a user clicks on an article)
var newToken = '/article/'+article.id; // or whatever
var oldToken = Ext.History.getToken();
if (oldToken === null || oldToken.search(newToken) === -1) {
  Ext.History.add(newToken);
}
...
Ext.History.on('change', function(token) {
  // handle the token changing, most likely by showing the right article
});