Bassview

Pronounced "Base View." Like the instrument, asshole.

This little ditty was inspired in part by a great article by Ian Storm Taylor, and my own pain in tracking down memory leaks in my Backbone apps due to zombie views.

It is just an extension of a Backbone.View that provides two helper methods: assign() and subview().

Methods

bassview.assign

Assigns one or more subviews to elements inside the parent view.

Usage 1 - bassview.assign( String selector, Backbone.View view )

Assigns view to selector, internally calling view.setElement(this.$(selector)).render();. See link to Ian Storm's Taylor's blog article above.

var parentview = new Bassview({...});
var subview    = new Bassview({...});

parentview.assign('div#subview-el', subview);

Usage 2 - bassview.assign( String selector, String view_key )

Same as above, but instead looks for a view registered through the subview method (below) with the name view_key.

var parentview = new Bassview({...});
parentview.subview('mySubView', new Bassview({...}));

parentview.assign('div#subview-el', 'mySubView');

Usage 3 - bassview.assign( Object selectors)

Performs same action as above multiple times by specifying a single object as the only argument, so this:

view.assign({
	".selector1" : new Basckbone.View({ model: this.model }),
	".selector2" : "mySubView",
	".selector3" : "myOtherSubView"
});

Is equivalent to this:

view.assign( ".selector1" , new Basckbone.View({ model: this.model }) );
view.assign( ".selector2" , "registered_subview" );
view.assign( ".selector3" , "other_subview );

Usage 4 - bassview.assign()

Looks for "pre-assigned" views. See the usage for the subview method below.

bassview.subview

Registers a view as being a subview. Subviews will destroy themselves when their parent views have been removed, preventing zombie views. Also registered subviews can be assigned using usage 2 and 4 above.

Usage 1 - bassview.subview( String key , Backbone.View view )

Sets a subview with an identifier of key. This means that view will call its own remove function when the parent view is removed.

var parentview = new Bassview({...});
parentview.subview('mySubView', new Bassview({...}));

Usage 2 - bassview.subview( String key )

Gets a subview registered with identifier key:

var parentview      = new Bassview({...});
var subview   = new Bassview({...});

parentview.subview("a_key", subview);
console.log(subview === parentview.subview("a_key"));
>>> true

Usage 3 - bassview.subview( String key, Backbone.View view, String selector )

Same as usage 1, but also populates a hidden property called __preassigned with selector, so that the subview can be assigned with no arguments:

var parentview = new Bassview({...});
parentview.subview("mySubView", new Bassview({...}), "div#subview-el");
parentview.subview("myOtherSubView", new Bassview({...}), "div#subview-el-2");

parentview.assign();

License

WTFPL