Issue when refreshing views and using the back button

Question

I'm building a simple backbone app that have 4 routes: home, about, privacy and terms. But after setting the routes I have 2 problems:

• When I refresh the #about or the #privacy page, the home view renders after the #about/#privacy view

• When I hit the back button the home view never renders. For example, if I'm in the #about page, and I hit the back button to the homepage, the about view stays in the page

I think that the two problema are related with something missing in the home router, but I don't know what is.

Here is the jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/swayziak/Mm8Mt/

And now the code:

Here is my code:

HTML

<section class="feed">

    <script id="homeTemplate" type="text/template">

        <div class="home">
        </div>

    </script>

    <script id="termsTemplate" type="text/template">

        <div class="terms">
        Bla bla bla bla
        </div>

    </script>   

    <script id="privacyTemplate" type="text/template">

        <div class="privacy">   
        Bla bla bla bla
        </div>

    </script>

    <script id="aboutTemplate" type="text/template">

         <div class="about">
         Bla bla bla bla
         </div>

    </script>

</section> 

The views

app.HomeListView = Backbone.View.extend({
    el: '.feed',

    initialize: function ( initialbooks ) {
         this.collection = new app.BookList (initialbooks);
         this.render();
    },

    render: function() {
         this.collection.each(function( item ){
         this.renderHome( item );
         }, this);
    },

    renderHome: function ( item ) {
         var bookview = new app.BookView ({
         model: item
         })
         this.$el.append( bookview.render().el );
         }  });

app.BookView = Backbone.View.extend ({
    tagName: 'div',
    className: 'home', 

     template: _.template( $( '#homeTemplate' ).html()),

    render: function() {
         this.$el.html(this.template(this.model.toJSON()));
         return this;
         }  
 });

app.AboutView = Backbone.View.extend({
     tagName: 'div',
     className: 'about',

     initialize:function () {
         this.render();
     },

     template: _.template( $( '#aboutTemplate' ).html()),

     render: function () {
         this.$el.html(this.template());
         return this;
     }
});

 app.PrivacyView = Backbone.View.extend ({
     tagName: 'div',
     className: 'privacy',

     initialize: function() {
         this.render();
     },

     template: _.template( $('#privacyTemplate').html() ),

     render: function () {
         this.$el.html(this.template());
         return this;
     }
});

 app.TermsView = Backbone.View.extend ({
     tagName: 'div',
     className: 'terms',

     initialize: function () {
         this.render();
     },

     template: _.template ( $( '#termsTemplate' ).html() ), 

     render: function () {
         this.$el.html(this.template());
         return this;
     }
 });

And the router:

var AppRouter = Backbone.Router.extend({
     routes: {
         '' : 'home',
         'about' : 'about',
         'privacy' : 'privacy',
         'terms' : 'terms'
     },

     home: function () {
         if (!this.homeListView) {
             this.homeListView = new app.HomeListView();
         };
     },

     about: function () {
         if (!this.aboutView) {
             this.aboutView = new app.AboutView();
        };
         $('.feed').html(this.aboutView.el);
     },

     privacy: function () {
         if (!this.privacyView) {
             this.privacyView = new app.PrivacyView();
         };
         $('.feed').html(this.privacyView.el);
     },

     terms: function () {
          if (!this.termsView) {
             this.termsView = new app.TermsView();
         };
         $('.feed').html(this.termsView.el);
     }
 })

 app.Router = new AppRouter();
 Backbone.history.start(); 

Thanks.

Answer 1

The problem is that you're replacing HomeView's HTML every time you navigate to another route. Also you're not rendering the HomeView in the router's home() method on subsequent calls.

If you only want to render the views once then you'd need to hide/show the views manually after the initial render and not just replace HomeView's HTML.