Ember.Console

This is a set of helpers for finding the application's currently active models/routes/controllers/etc. This isn't a straightforward process because of how Ember (rightly) encapsulates application objects, but it's useful in debugging environments to be able to quickly access them.

Usage

All helpers can be called directly if you provide them an application instance:

// the `app` variable is an `Ember.Application` instance
var currentModel = Ember.Console.helpers.model(app);

But usually you'll want to inject them into the global namespace for ease of access:

// app/app.js
if (config.environment === 'development') {
  App.initializer({
    name: 'injectConsoleHelpers',

    initialize: function(container, app) {
      Ember.Console.injectHelpers(window, app);
    }
  });
}

// later in the console
model().get('id')

// > 'post1'

Getting Ember Data records is easy as well:

store().getById('user', '74');

// > Class {id: "74"…}

Testing

These same helpers can also be very useful for integration testing. When they are registered as test helpers, they are prefixed with current:

// somewhere in test bootstrapping
Ember.Console.registerTestHelpers();

// later in a test
visit('/post/post1');
andThen(function() {
  expect(currentModel().get('id')).to.equal('post1');
});

Be careful! Just like normal Ember test helpers, all helpers are exposed as globals, so their generic names may conflict with simple local variable names:

// because of variable hoisting, the global helper is wiped out before it can be used
var currentModel = currentModel();

// nope!
expect(currentModel).to.be.ok();

Note

The Ember.Debug namespace is taken by the Ember Inspector chrome extension. The basics of these helpers was originally taken from a testing example I cannot find any longer.