Question

I have following piece of code from my Backbone project:

App.Controllers.Test = Backbone.Router.extend({
  routes: {
    'test': 'test',
    'help': 'help'
  },

  help: function() {
    console.log('help');
  },

  test: function() {
    console.log('test');
  },

  initialize: function() {
    console.log('init');
  }
});


// ...

new App.Controllers.Test()

But all I ever see in my console is init even if call the url with #test or #help
Does anybody know what is missing?

Answer 1

Your initialize function will always run first, so your router is being instantiated, but perhaps you haven’t invoked History, after you invoke your router you need a line of code like:

Backbone.history.start({pushState: true})

The pushState option is if you are using newer browsers that have the history api, since you’re calling your routes with a hash, you might not need pushState.

If your router is assigned to the variable routes, your code may look like this:

var routes = new Backbone.Router.extend({...});

Backbone.history.start({pushState: true});