Overview
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Backbone.Brace
Brace is an extension to Backbone that adds mixins and self-documenting attributes & events.
Self-documenting attributes and events
Brace allows:
- "namedEvents" on Models, Collections, Views and Routers, which is a collection of exposed events
- "namedAttributes" on Models, which is a collection of exposed attributes - ie a model schema
Both namedEvents and namedAttributes are arrays of strings.
var Person = Brace.Model.extend({
namedAttributes: ["name"],
namedEvents: ["sleep"]
});
For each attribute in namedAttributes, get[Attribute] and set[Attribute] methods are generated:
var person = new Person();
person.setName("Tim");
person.getName() // Returns "Tim"
Backbone models' get() and set() validate attributes:
person.get("name"); // ok
person.set("name", "Timmy"); // ok
person.set({
name: "Timothy"
}); // ok
person.get("lost"); // throws exception
person.set("lost", "frequently"); // throws exception
person.set({
lost: "frequently"
}); // throws exception
For each event in namedEvents, on[Event] and trigger[Event] methods are generated:
person.onSleep(function(dream) { console.log("Dreaming about " + dream); } );
person.triggerSleep("Unicorns");
Mixins
Brace allows a "mixins" property on models, views, collections and routers:
var Loggable = {
log: function(msg) {
console.log(msg);
}
};
var PersonView = Brace.View.extend({
mixins: [Loggable],
initialize: function() {
this.log("Initialized");
}
});
Mixins with Backbone
namedAttributes and namedEvents in mixins are respected:
var Selectable = {
namedAttributes: ["selected"],
namedEvents: ["select"],
initialize: function() {
this.on("change:selected", _.bind(function(model, selected) {
if (selected) {
this.triggerSelect();
}
}, this));
}
};
var Person = Brace.Model.extend({
mixins: [Selectable]
});
var person = new Person();
person.onSelect(function() { console.log("Person was selected"); });
person.setSelected(true);
person.getSelected();
person.triggerSelect();
Additionally, Brace composes
- initialize() on all objects, and
- defaults and validate() on models
All other name clashes between mixins fail violently and forcefully at class declaration time (not at instance construction time).
var Runnable = {
run: function() {}
};
var RunModel = Brace.Model.extend({
mixins: [Runnable],
run: function() {}
}); // throws "Mixin error: class already has property 'run' defined"