Backbone.D3View

A drop-in replacement for Backbone.View that uses only D3 DOM methods for element selection and event delegation. It has no dependency on jQuery.

NOTE: Backbone.D3View relies on at least version 1.2.0 of Backbone. Backbone 1.1.2 is not compatible with Backbone.D3View.

To Use:

Load Backbone.D3View with your favorite module loader or add as a script tag after you have loaded Backbone and D3 in the page. Wherever you had previously inherited from Backbone.View, you will now inherit from Backbone.D3View.

var MyView = Backbone.D3View.extend({
  initialize: function(options) {
    // ...
  }
});

As an alternative, you may extend an existing View's prototype to use D3 methods, or even replace Backbone.View itself:

_.extend(Backbone.View.prototype, Backbone.D3ViewMixin);
 
var MyView = Backbone.View.extend({
  initialize: function(options) {
    // ...
  }
});

Features:

Delegation:

var view = new MyView({el: '#my-element'});
view.delegate('click', view.clickHandler);

Undelegation with event names or listeners,

view.undelegate('click', view.clickHandler);
view.undelegate('click');

View-scoped element finding that returns a NodeList:

view.$('.box')[0].classList.remove('active'); // for one matched element
// for multiple matched elements
_.each(view.$('.sidebar'), function(el) {
  el.classList.add('active')
});
var fields = _.invoke(view.$('.field'), 'innerHTML');

View-scoped element finding that returns a d3 selector:

var Graph = Backbone.D3View.extend({
  tagName: 'svg',
 
  render: function() {
    var node = this.$$(".node")
      .data(bubble.nodes(classes(root))
      .filter(function(d) { return !d.children; }))
    .enter().append("g")
      .attr("class", "node")
      .attr("transform", function(d) { return "translate(" + d.x + "," + d.y + ")"; });
  }
});

Direct reference to the D3 selection:

var Graph = Backbone.D3View.extend({
  el: '#graph',
 
  initialize: function() {
    this.d3el.classed({'foo': true, 'bar': false});
  }
});

Requirements:

• A browser that supports D3.

Running tests:

The test suite includes the original Backbone.View QUnit conformance tests as well as a suite of Backbone.D3View-specific tests in mocha.

Notes:

• The $el property no longer exists on Views. Use el instead. You may also use the d3el property for the reference to the D3 selection.
• The $ method returns a NodeList instead of a jQuery context. You can iterate over either using _.each.