RailsyBackbone

Backbone 1.0.0
Underscore 1.5.1

Questions/Suggestions   =>   open a GitHub issue - 24 hr response time

Rails Setup

Install

Add this line to Gemfile,

gem 'railsy_backbone'

And then,

$ bundle install
$ rails g backbone:install

This requires underscore, backbone, and JS customizations to make Backbone play nice with Rails (see Javscript files with rails_backbone. prefix regarding what changed).

//= require jquery
//= require jquery_ujs
//= require underscore
//= require backbone
//= require railsy_backbone.sync
//= require railsy_backbone.datalink
//= require backbone/<your_application_name_here>
//= require_tree .

Generators

Rails Install
Backbone Model
Backbone Router
Backbone Scaffold

Example Usage

Create new rails app,

rails new library
cd library

Install railsy_backbone,

# add railsy_backbone to Gemfile
bundle install
rails g backbone:install

Generate a standard Rails scaffold,

rails g scaffold Book title:string author:string
rake db:migrate

Generate a Backbone scaffold,

rails g backbone:scaffold Book title:string author:string

Edit books/index.html to execute actions through the Backbone scaffold UI rather than routing to different pages.

### ERB

<div id="books"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">
  $(function() {
    window.router = new Library.Routers.BooksRouter({books: <%= @books.to_json.html_safe -%>});
    Backbone.history.start();
  });
</script>


### HAML

#books

:javascript
  $(function() {
    window.router = new Library.Routers.BooksRouter({books: #{@books.to_json.html_safe}});
    Backbone.history.start();
  });

Features

1. Nested Model Attributes
2. Automatic Rails CSRF Integration

Nested Model Attributes

Allows you to specify a namespace for model attributes by defining a paramRoot attribute. For example,

var Book = Backbone.Model.extend({ 
  url: '/books',
  paramRoot: 'book'
});

var book_instance = new Book({ 
  title:  'the illiad', 
  author: 'homer'
});

book_instance.sync();

This will cause the HTTP POST to look like this,

Started POST "/books" for 127.0.0.1
  Processing by BooksController#create as JSON
  Parameters: { "book" => { 
    "title" => "the illiad", 
    "author" => "homer", 
    "id" => 1}
  }

Automatic Rails CSRF Integration

Automatically handles the Rails authenticity_token. Or, more technically, sets the xhr.setRequestHeader to the Rails CSRF token supplied in the HTML header meta tag.

Docs

Here's the link to our docs.

I really value clear communication (I'm serious!). If you think something is missing in the docs, please let me know via a GitHub issue (create issues here), and I'll look at adding it.

Contributions

Nicholas Zaillian

Credits

See LICENSE