Question

This is driving me crazy right now. I cannot get a simple router to work…

    jQuery ->
        class MyRouter extends Backbone.Router
            routes:
              ""            :"index"
              "/list"       :"showList"
              "/item/:id"   :"showItem"
            index: =>
              alert "index"
            showList: =>
              alert "get the lists"
            showItem: (id)=>
              alert "the item #{id}"

         @app = window ? {}
         @app = window.app ? {}
         @app.myRouter = MyRouter
         Backbone.history.start()

I always get this error:
index.js:50Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method 'start' of undefined

and I saw this: Cannot call 'start' of undefined when starting backbone.js history.

but it did not help =(…

I am sure this is an easy one but I am some sort of stuck here …
please help…

Answer 1

You didn’t create an instance of a Backbone.Router, so Backbone.history.start() will fail.

@app.myRouter = new MyRouter()

The link you posted tells you exactly what the problem is:

TypeError: Cannot call method ‘start’ of undefined**

Hmm, for some reason Backbone.history is undefined, and so there is no start method on it. It turns out that Backbone.js creates an
instance of Backbone.History (upper case ‘H’) called Backbone.history
(lower case ‘h’) once a controller has been created that has at
least one route specified on it. This makes sense, as history
management is only required if there are routes to respond to.