I'd like to use Backbone's fantastic routing system, but I'd like to NOT have any form of hash support for older browsers. Is it possible to disable hashes entirely when using pushState in Backbone.History?

I'd like to use Backbone's fantastic routing system, but I'd like to NOT have any form of hash support for older browsers. Is it possible to disable hashes entirely when using pushState in Backbone.History?

• javascript
• html
• backbone.js

Share Improve this question Follow asked Mar 3, 2012 at 0:50 CarsonCarson 17.8k2121 gold badges7575 silver badges8888 bronze badges

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2 Answers 2

Sorted by: Reset to default 7

It's not documented on the backbone.js page, but I found it in the annotated source. If you pass hashChange false to Backbone.history.start(), backbone will not use the hash fallback.

EG:

Backbone.history.start({hashChange:false, pushState:true})

There's lots of good reasons to support pushState, and not fall back to use of hashes, all while still supporting older browsers (the browser will go to the new url and reload instead of updating with ajax).

There's no built in support for this, if it's important to your app to not work in older browsers you could probably modify your version of Backbone. You could just add something like the following at the start of your DomReady function:

if (window.history && window.history.pushState) {
     // main script
} else {
     alert("Your browser doesn't support push state and I don't want backwards patibility");
     window.location('http://away.from.here');
}