Backbone.js Cookbook

Over 80 recipes for creating outstanding web applications with Backbone.js, leveraging MVC, and REST architecture principles

Overview

• Easy-to-follow recipes to build dynamic web applications
• Learn how to integrate with various frontend and mobile frameworks
• Synchronize data with a RESTful backend and HTML5 local storage
• Learn how to optimize and test Backbone applications

In Detail

There is no doubt that the superior rendering power of HTML5, thin-to-thick client transition and REST style communication created a new era in web development, replacing the outdated approach based on browser plugin technologies. Backone.js allows developers to write lightweight, modular, and scalable JavaScript applications.

Backbone.js Cookbook contains a series of recipes that provide practical, step-by-step solutions to the problems that may occur during frontend application development using an MVC pattern. You will learn how to build Backbone applications utilizing the power of popular Backbone extensions and integrating your app with different third party libraries. You will also learn how to fulfill the requirements of the most challenging tasks.

The first chapter of the book introduces you to the MVC paradigm and teaches you how to architect rich Internet applications operating with basic concepts of Backbone.js. During the reading of this book you will learn how to solve challenging problems leveraging Backbone objects such as models, collections, views, routers, and so on.

You learn how to use forms, layouts, templating engines, and other Backbone extensions, which will help you to complete specific features of your application. You will understand how to bind a model to a DOM element. You will see how perfectly Backbone.js integrates with third party libraries and frameworks such as jQuery, Zepto, Underscore.js, Require.js, Mustache.js, Twitter Bootstrap, jQueryMobile, PhoneGap and many others. This book will guide you in how to optimize and test your applications, create your own Backbone extensions, and share them with the open source community.

With the help of Backbone.js Cookbook, you will learn everything you need to know to create outstanding rich Internet applications using the JavaScript programming language.

What you will learn from this book

• Architecting and building dynamic web applications in an MVC style
• Modeling business logic with Backbone models and collections
• Rendering data with Backbone views
• Routing URLs within your application
• Communicating with a RESTful service
• Using HTML5 local storage to store models and collections
• Optimizing and testing Backbone applications
• Writing your own Backbone extensions
• Ensuring compatibility with search engines
• Creating mobile apps with jQueryMobile and PhoneGap

Approach

This is a Cookbook with easy-to-follow recipes, containing practical and detailed examples which are all fully backed up with code, illustrations, and tips to dig deep into Backbone.js.

Who this book is written for

This book is great for JavaScript developers who want to learn how to build advanced frontend applications with the Backbone.js framework. This book can be used in educational institutions to teach students how to build frontend applications in an MVC manner.

It’s assumed that you have some experience in jQuery, and are familiar with HTML.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Understanding Backbone
Chapter 2: Models
Chapter 3: Collections
Chapter 4: Views
Chapter 5: Events and Bindings
Chapter 6: Templates and UX sugar
Chapter 7: REST and Storage
Chapter 8: Special Techniques