Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices

A one-stop guide to best practices and design patterns when building applications using Backbone.js

Overview

• Offers solutions to common Backbone.js related problems that most developers face
• Shows you how to use custom widgets, plugins, and mixins to make your code reusable
• Describes patterns and best practices for large scale JavaScript application architecture and unit testing applications with QUnit and SinonJS frameworks

In Detail

Backbone.js is a super light framework that allows you to structure your JavaScript codes in anMV* fashion. This framework is an excellent tool when it comes to creating an organized and modular code base for web apps of any size or complexity. Although lightweight, Backbone.js results in lots of boilerplate. Learning the best practices and design patterns will help you avoid these problems and allow you to ensure that the best standards are followed.

Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practicesis packed with examples that will help you work with Backbone.js components. It also gives solutions to common problems faced by developers. It gives a complete overview of plugin development, large scale application architecture, and unit testing as well.

Starting with a discussion of why reducing boilerplate in your JavaScript code is essential, Backbone.js Patterns and Best Practices explains how to enforce reusability in your code by creating plugins and mixins. You will learn about patterns and best practices for Backbone views, models, collections, routers, and events.

You will discover solutions to common problems that developers face through simple examples, and delve into the best open source plugins available to solve these problems when they arise. This book is an excellent collection of design and implementation patterns that will help you structure and develop complex Backbone.js applications easily.

What you will learn from this book

• Develop custom plugins and mixins to reduce boilerplate in your code
• Learn about Backbone view management with nested views, subviews, layout manager, and Marionette views
• Understand template management by storing and pre-compiling templates
• Explore model validation with validation plugins and learn model serialization and relational data management with nested models
• Work with collections to implement multiple sorting and filtering behavior
• Create solid application architecture with AMD and different popular design patterns

Approach

This is a step-by-step guide to design patterns, best practices, and solutions to common problems for Backbone.js-based application development.

Who this book is written for

This book is for JavaScript developers who work with Backbone.js and want to learn the best design patterns to develop complex web applications. Basic knowledge of Backbone.js and JavaScript is essential.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Reducing Boilerplate with Plugin Development
Chapter 2: Working with Views
Chapter 3: Working with Models
Chapter 4: Working with Collections
Chapter 5: Routing Best Practices and Subrouting
Chapter 6: Working with Events, Sync, and Storage
Chapter 7: Organizing Backbone Applications – Structure, Optimize, and Deploy
Chapter 8: Unit Test, Stub, Spy, and Mock Your App
Appendix A: Books, Tutorials, and References
Appendix B: Precompiling Templates on the Server Side
Appendix C: Organizing Templates with AMD and Require.js