Ember.js 2.1, a minor version release of Ember with additive features only, is released today. This release represents the work of over 82 direct contributors, and over 850 commits.

Ember.js 2.2 beta, the branch of Ember that will be released as stable in roughly six weeks, is also being released today.

New Features in Ember.js 2.1

Changes to the Ember's API in 2.1 are backwards compatible. A summary of the new features in today's release follows.

{{get}} Helper

The {{get}} helper allows dynamic property lookup on objects in templates. For example, these two usages are equivalent:

{{user.name}}
{{get user "name"}}

A property with a value of a string can be passed as the second argument, making both the object and the property being read dynamic. For example:

{{get user somePropertyName}}

For documentation on get, reference the API documentation.

Big thanks to @jmurphyau for the implementation of this feature, and for his excellent ember-get-helper addon that demonstrated how useful this helper would be. Using his ember-truth-helpers addon in 1.13 codebases is highly recommended.

{{each-in}} Helper

The {{each-in}} helper iterates keys and values of an object. It is similar conceptually to the for (key in object) { syntax of JavaScript. For example, this code would display a list of all property names and values on the user object:

<ul>
{{#each-in user as |key value|}}
  <li>{{key}}: {{value}}</li>
{{/each-in}}
</ul>

When using {{each-in}}, the iterated list of keys will be unbound. If a new property is set on user with user.newProp = 'newVal';, the new property will not appear.

For documentation on the {{each-in}} helper, see the API documentation.

Thanks to @tomdale for the implementation of this feature, and thanks to @miguelcamba for his followup PRs.

Registry and Container Reform

The Ember.js registry and container are some of the most extensively used private APIs in the framework. They provided one of the only ways to lookup arbitrary objects from Ember's dependency container.

We are committed to stabilizing this part of the framework and offering public APIs. This first step creates a normalized way to interact with register and lookup that we expect to last through the 2.x cycle and beyond.

In 2.1, Ember.Application instances are passed as the first argument to initializer hooks. initializer hooks are where dependencies between object types can be configured, and factories can be registered. Several public APIs will exist on Ember.Application instances, some of them new:

• register - register a factory
• inject - inject a factory into another factory, or all factories of a type
• unregister - remove a factory from registration
• resolveRegistration - fetch a registered factory
• hasRegistration - check for a registered factory
• registerOption, registeredOption, registerOptions, registeredOptions, registerOptionsForType, registeredOptionsForType which manage options for a factory (is it a singleton, can it be instantiated).

Ember.ApplicationInstance instances are passed as the first argument to instanceInitializer hooks in 2.1. instanceInitializer hooks are where factories can be fetched out of the configured and booted application. One relevant public APIs exists on Ember.ApplicationInstances:

• lookup - fetch an instance of a factory (with dependencies)

You can find updates to the guides regarding initializers in the revamped Application Concerns section. The API documentation is similarly updated at the ember-application namespace, Ember.Application class, and Ember.ApplicationInstance class.

This feature also introduces two minor deprecations:

• Expecting two arguments for an initializer hook is deprecated
• Calling appInstance.container.lookup on the first argument to an instance initializer is deprecated in favor of appInstance.lookup.

Deprecations flag where we expect to change an API in the future. It is not recommended that you use deprecated functionality, but you can also safely silence a deprecation message and continue to use that functionality until its removal date.

A huge thanks to the tireless @dgeb for his work on the RFC, implementation, and documentation for these changes. They represent a significant improvement in Ember's dependency injection system.

Deprecate and Warn Handlers

In the run up to Ember 2.0, it became clear that the tooling for management of deprecations was poor. One of the reasons for this was the lack of a public, documented API for deciding how a deprecations and warnings should be handled. 2.1 introduces a proper API for our tooling to build upon.

The default behavior of a deprecation or warning is to log to the console. To change this behavior, register a handler and write custom logic. For example this handler would throw an exception for any deprecation messages with the word should in them:

Ember.Debug.registerDeprecationHandler((message, options, next) => {
  if (message.indexOf('should') !== -1) {
    throw new Error('Deprecation message with should: '+message);
  } else {
    // defer to whatever handler was registered before this one
    next(message, options);
  }
});

In this example, all warnings are silenced:

// next is not called, so no warnings get the default behavior
Ember.Debug.registerWarnHandler(() => {});

Handlers are provided with the following data through arguments:

• message is the text logged by default
• options is an object containing at minimum the property id in the format package-name.specific-deprecation
• next is a caller for the previously registered handler. Often, this is the default handler.

Deprecation handlers will also be provided:

• options.until is the version of Ember this feature and deprecation will be removed in

As of Ember 2.0, deprecate and warn calls must provide an id option, and deprecate calls must additionally provide an until option. Addons not providing this data during 2.x will trigger a deprecation warning.

For more information see the Ember.Debug API documentsion. This API can be used with previous versions of Ember via the ember-debug-handlers-polyfill, though id and until data is not provided until Ember 2.0.

Thanks to @rwjblue for shipping this API and the polyfill addon, and to @mixonic for the RFC.

For more details on changes landing in 2.1, review the Ember.js 2.1.0 CHANGELOG.

Ember.js 2.2 beta

No new features are slated for Ember 2.2. During the canary cycle leading to this beta, the core team and community have been primarily focused on performance improvements or feature work still behind a feature flag.

For more details on changes landing in 2.2, review the Ember.js 2.2.0-beta.1 CHANGELOG.