Idea: Make renderRegions method unnecessary

[boustanihani]

I am using iron:router@=1.0.0-rc.1

Regions are missing when using this.render('templatename') inside a route!

For reproduction goto http://missing-regions.meteor.com/ then click Page 2 and notice how the content of Region 1 will disappear.

Repo: https://github.com/boustanihani/missing-regions

<template name="defaultLayout">
  <h3>Default Layout</h3>

  <div style="border:solid;padding:1em">
    <h3>Region 1</h3>
    {{> yield 'region1'}}
  </div>

  <br>
  <div style="border:solid;padding:1em">{{> yield}}</div>
</template>

<template name="putInRegion1">
  <h4>Region 1 Content</h4>
  <h4 style="color:red">Empty when using this.render('templatename')</h4>
</template>

<template name="page1">
  <h4>Page 1</h4>
  Goto: <a href="/page2">Page 2</a>
</template>

<template name="page2">
  <h4>Page 2</h4>
  Goto: <a href="/">Page 1</a>
</template>

Router.configure({
  yieldTemplates: {
    'putInRegion1': {
      to: 'region1'
    }
  },
  layoutTemplate: 'defaultLayout',
});

Router.route('/', {
  template: 'page1'
});

Router.route('/page2', function() {
  this.render('page2');
});

[cmather]

Hey @boustanihani, you need to explicitly say this.renderRegions if you want to render the regions from your options. This happens automatically if you use this.render() // no template name.

[boustanihani]

Don't you think this should also be the default behaviour when passing a template name?

Take the following example from the docs: http://eventedmind.github.io/iron-router/#using-hooks

You would like to render the 'Login' template on specific routes if the user is not logged. Naturally you would also want the whole template with all regions to be rendered:

Router.onBeforeAction(function () {
  // all properties available in the route function
  // are also available here such as this.params

  if (!Meteor.user()) {
    // if the user is not logged in, render the Login template
    this.render('Login');
  } else {
    // otherwise don't hold up the rest of hooks or our route/action function
    from running
    this.next();
  }
});

[boustanihani]

How about adding the option { renderRegions : false } to render() for further needs ?

[cmather]

We could update the API. Going to move this to brainstorming so we can continue discussion there.