Should I refer to controller.model or controller.content in a view?

Question

If I have a model of products and in my view I loop over them both of the below is valid.

Which one should I use? Is there a reason for both?

I prefer controller.model , seems more explicit.

{{#each product in controller.model}}
    <div>{{product.artist}}</div>
{{/each}}


{{#each product in controller.content}}
    <div>{{product.artist}}</div>
{{/each}}

Answer 1

Which one should I use?

Actually neither. Instead you should bind to the controller itself, like this:

{{#each product in controller}}
  <div>{{product.artist}}</div>
{{/each}}

While controller.content and controller.model appear to work at first, you'll find that this approach breaks for more advanced use cases like sorting and specifying an itemController.

Is there a reason for both?

AFAIK there is no difference between using controller.content and controller.model . The model property is really an alias to the content property.

// Ember controller definition:
model: Em.computed.alias('content')

Answer 2

From ember source code seems that the model is an alias for content :

Ember.ControllerMixin = Ember.Mixin.create({
    ...
    model: Ember.computed.alias('content'),
    ...
});