Backbone.Overview

This package provides two new types of Backbone Views.

• Backbone.Overview
• Backbone.OrderedListView

The two different View types

Backbone.Overview

An Overview is a View that references and keeps track of sub-views (i.e. just normal Backbone.Views) Kind of like what a Collection is to a Model.

An Overview provides methods for handling the views it keeps track of:

• add(id, view)
• get(id)
• getAll()
• keys()
• remove(id)
• removeAll()

Backbone.OrderedListView

An OrderedListView is a special type of Overview which handles the case where you have a list of items that need to be presented in a certain order.

The order is determined by your Overview's comparator attribute or method.

The OrderedListView relies on a few conventions and then has three attributes which you set in order to configure it for your usecase.

These are:

• listItems (Default value 'model') The listItems attribute denotes the path (from this View) to the list of items. This list must be a Backbone.Collection.
• sortEvent (Default value 'change') The sortEvent attribute specifies the event which should cause the ordered list to be sorted.
• listSelector (Default value '.ordered-items') The listSelector is the selector used to query for the DOM list element which contains the ordered items.
• ItemView (Default value undefined) The itemView is constructor which should be called to create a View for a new item to be rendered in the list.

When an item changes, as defined by the sortEvent, then the OrderedListView will automatically sort the list and rerender the items in order.

When new items are added to the Backbone.Collection specified by listItems, then the OrderedListView will automatically add a new View for that item (as specified by ItemView) and insert it into the ordered list.

Usage

Include Backbone.Overview after having included Backbone.js:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="backbone.js"></script> 
    <script type="text/javascript" src="backbone.overview.js"></script> 

Creating an Overview

Create your overview like this:

    this.RosterView = Backbone.Overview.extend({
    // ... same customizations as you would make for a normal Backbone.View
    });

Underscore

You can use the usual underscore methdods, like you can with Backbone Collections.

For example:

    this.rosterview = new this.RosterView();
    this.rosterview.add(new Backbone.View({model: new Backbone.Model()));
 
    this.rosterview.each(function (view) {
        // Do something
    });

Creating an OrderedListView:

    this.RosterView = Backbone.OrderedListView.extend({
        // The `listItems` attribute denotes the path (from this View) to the
        // list of items.
        listItems: 'model',
        // The `sortEvent` attribute specifies the event which should cause the
        // ordered list to be sorted.
        sortEvent: 'change',
        // The `listSelector` is the selector used to query for the DOM list
        // element which contains the ordered items.
        listSelector: '.ordered-items',
        // The `itemView` is constructor which should be called to create a
        // View for a new item.
        ItemView: undefined,
        // The `subviewIndex` is the attribute of the list element model which
        // acts as the index of the subview in the overview.
        // An overview is a "Collection" of views, and they can be retrieved
        // via an index. By default this is the 'id' attribute, but it could be
        // set to something else.
        subviewIndex: 'id',
 
        initialize () {
            Backbone.OrderedListView.prototype.initialize.apply(this, arguments);
        }
    });

RequireJS

Include RequireJS:

    <script type="text/javascript" src="lib/require.js"></script> 

RequireJS config:

    require.config({
        paths: {
            jquery: "lib/jquery",
            underscore: "lib/underscore",
            backbone: "lib/backbone",
            backbone.overview: "lib/backbone.overview"
        }
    });

    define(["backbone.overview"], function() {
        this.RosterView = Backbone.Overview.extend({
        // ... same customizations as you would make for a normal Backbone.View
        });
    });

Using Backbone.Overview without jQuery

Backbone can be used without jQuery by using Backbone.NativeView instead of Backbone.View.

If Backbone.NativeView is available, then the Overview and OrderedListView will use that instead of Backbone.View.

Real-world example

Overviews and OrderedListViews are used in converse.js