How to access controller from route in Ember?

Question

Is there any foolproof way to access controller from a route?

<a href="#" class="btn" {{action "someAction" user}}>add</a>

App.ApplicationRoute = Ember.Route.extend
  events:
    someAction: (user) ->
      console.log 'give me name from currentUser controller'

The someAction is very general and I think that ApplicationRoute is the best place for it.

Nike

Answer 1

I think the method controllerFor should be available in this event:

App.ApplicationRoute = Ember.Route.extend
  events:
    someAction: (user) ->
      console.log this.controllerFor("currentUser").get("name")

Update in response to the questions in the comments:

It all depends on what you want to do. Worrying about DRY on such a basic method, does not make much sense imho.

In your kudos left case I would do this:

App.ApplicationRoute = Ember.Route.extend
  events:
    someAction: (user) ->
      this.controllerFor("currentUser").decrementKudos();
      // implement the decrementKudos in your controller

But I guess storing this one controller should also work, if this is too much code for you:

App.ApplicationRoute = Ember.Route.extend
  currentUserCon : this.controllerFor("currentUser")
  events:
    someAction: (user) ->
      this.currentUserCon.decrementKudos();
      // implement the decrementKudos in your controller

Overthrow

Thanks, but is it possible to get a reference to that property, e.g can I store it in a variable so that I can operate on it? name = this.controllerFor('currentUser').get 'name' return "hello, #{name} is it possible? Accessing controllers in such a way many times is not DRY :) – Nike

For example this would be an overkill: this.controllerFor('currentUser').set 'kudosLeft', this.controllerFor('currentUser').get 'kudosLeft' - 1 :) – Nike

@WojtekRyrych Also, this: emberjs.com/guides/cookbook/working_with_objects/… – Remus

I'm not sure when this happened, but in Ember 1.12.0, controllerFor is deprecated. – Celadon

You can inject it with Ember.inject.controller() or from a route there is a this.controller property to use, – Gnosis

Answer 2

In the newer version of ember you can access current route's controller in route as below

Ember version 2.5

currentUserCon : this.controller

if you want to access other routes controller then use controllerFor method.

this.controllerFor('path to controller'); //put path to controller as parameter.

Forwhy

I've found (at least in my Ember 2.14 app) that this.controller is undefined at least through the activate() route hook, but controllerFor('current.route.name') will return the controller. – Salto

Like @TomWayson I have found that this doesn't work in Ember 2.13 . The doco suggests it's there but if fails when you try to use it. . I was able to use this.controllerFor successfully. – Soubrette