How to refresh a page in a backbone application

Question

I am using backbone to build my web app.

Currently I am facing an issue whereby if I am on the home page, I am unable to refresh the same page by just clicking on the 'home' button again.

I believe that this is the limitation provided by backbone (does not reload the page if the same URL is called)

Is there any way around this? So that I can trigger a page reload when I click on the home button again i.e. call the same URL again?

Answer 1

You're looking for Backbone.history.loadUrl. From the Annotated Source:

Attempt to load the current URL fragment. If a route succeeds with a match, returns true. If no defined routes matches the fragment, returns false.

So, for a simple refresh link, you can add the following event to your Backbone.View:

events: {
  'click a#refresh': function() {
    Backbone.history.loadUrl();
    return false;
  }
}