Ember 1.5.0 and 1.6 Beta Released

We are pleased to announce that both Ember.js 1.5.0 and the first beta in the 1.6 series have been released. This comes as the fifth cycle of our six-week release process that began after 1.0 was released.

New features in 1.5

Handlebars Logging of Primitive Values

This feature allows you to log primitive values (strings, numbers, etc) from within your templates. Previously, the {{log}} helper only allowed usage of bound property lookup.

{{log "**LOOKEY HERE**"}}

New Testing Helpers

Routing Helpers

A few new testing helpers have been added to make it easier to make assertions on the state of routing in your application (for example to confirm clicking a given link results in a redirect to a specific route).

New routing test helpers: currentRouteName, currentPath, and currentURL.

Trigger Event Helper

A new triggerEvent helper has been created to allow triggering of arbitrary events on an element.

triggerEvent('#some-element-id', 'dblclick');

Ember.computed.readOnly

Generally, when you use Ember.computed.oneWay you would also need to call readOnly to ensure no data propagates back up.

// prior to Ember.computed.readOnly you would have to do the following:
Ember.computed.oneWay('foo').readOnly()

// in 1.5 you can use the following for the same result:
Ember.computed.readOnly('foo')

Ember.isBlank

A new shortcut for checking if a particular object is empty or an empty string:

Ember.isBlank();                // true
Ember.isBlank(null);            // true
Ember.isBlank(undefined);       // true
Ember.isBlank('');              // true
Ember.isBlank([]);              // true
Ember.isBlank('\n\t');          // true
Ember.isBlank('  ');            // true
Ember.isBlank({});              // false
Ember.isBlank('\n\t Hello');    // false
Ember.isBlank('Hello world');   // false
Ember.isBlank([1,2,3]);         // false

Eager Updating URL

Previously, the URL in the address bar would only update at the very end of the transition. This change causes the URL update to happen immediately unless the transition was aborted/redirected within the same run loop, which provides for a better UX 99% of the time.

Auto Location

Adds auto as a location option for the app's Router.

App.Router.reopen({
  location: 'auto'
});

When used, Ember will select the best location option based off browser support with the priority order: history, hash, none.

Clean pushState paths accessed by hashchange-only browsers will be redirected to the hash-equivalent and vice versa so future transitions look consistent.

Bound Action Lookup

The {{action}} helper will now use a non-quoted parameter and perform a bound property lookup against the action's target at the time the event is triggered. This allows usage of a dynamic action name (determined by looking up the property).

Routes Inherit Model

Ember routes and leaf resources (without nested routes) will inherit the parent route's model.

Take the following example:

App.Router.map(function(){
  this.resource('post', function(){
    this.route('edit');
  });
});

App.PostRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
  model: function(){
    return {title: 'ZOMG', text: 'AWESOME'};
  }
});

App.PostEditRoute = Ember.Route.extend({
  model: function(){
    return this.modelFor('post');
  }
});

Now in 1.5, you do not have to define the model hook for PostEditRoute as the default implementation is to use the parent routes model.

Other Notable Changes

Ever-present _super (Breaking Bugfix)

Prior versions of Ember.js used a super mechanism that was un-safe for mixins. If more than one _super was called for a given function name and there was no terminating function, an infinite loop would occur. See #3523 for further discussion.

The solution released in 1.5 fixes this behavior (see #3683), but also breaks the edge-case of using _super out of line. For instance:

  doIt: function(){
    Ember.run.once(this, this._super);
  }

Is no longer a supported use of _super. See this jsbin for a live example. If this change impacts you, please comment on #4632.

Handlebars {{each}} Helper Checks Markup

In some cases, the browser may add or fix tags, which change the parentage of metamorph tags. This problem happens frequently when the developer doesn't include the TBODY tag inside a table for example. This prevents the framework from updating or cleaning the underlying DOM elements.

An assertion has been added in non-production builds that indicates that the metamorph start and end tags have different parents. This is most commonly caused by using an {{each}} inside of a <table> tag without specifying a <tbody>.

Example demonstrating the assertion (JSBin here):

<table>
  {{#each}}
    <tr></tr>
  {{/each}}
</table>

And the resolution is to include a <tbody> (JSBin here):

<table>
  <tbody>
    {{#each}}
      <tr></tr>
    {{/each}}
  </tbody>
</table>

Other Improvements

As usual, there are a ton of bug fixes and small improvements in this release. You can see a list of all the changes in the CHANGELOG:

• Ember.js 1.5.0 CHANGELOG
• Ember.js 1.6.0-beta.1 CHANGELOG