Developing Backbone.js Applications

If you’re looking to use the single-page application model to build your site’s frontend, Backbone.js is an ideal framework for the job. This practical guide provides all the information you need to create structured JavaScript applications using Backbone.js and its unique flavor of the model-view-controller (MVC) architecture.

You’ll start with the essentials of Backbone’s models, views, collections, and routers, and then dive into methods for building RESTful applications with modern technology stacks. Author Addy Osmani also demonstrates advanced uses of the framework, as well as ways to conduct unit tests.

• Learn MVC fundamentals to help you understand the framework
• Build Backbone apps with Node.js, Express, Mongoose, and MongoDB
• Create applications with the Ruby, Sinatra, Haml, and MongoDB stack
• Cleanly wrap units of application code into manageable modules
• Decouple Backbone with the Mediator and Facade patterns
• Resolve routing problems between Backbone and jQuery Mobile
• Unit test Backbone apps with Jasmine or QUnit and SinonJS

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Fundamentals
Chapter 3. Backbone Basics
Chapter 4. Exercise 1: Todos—Your First Backbone.js App
Chapter 5. Exercise 2: Book Library—Your First RESTful Backbone.js App
Chapter 6. Backbone Extensions
Chapter 7. Common Problems and Solutions
Chapter 8. Modular Development
Chapter 9. Exercise 3: Your First Modular Backbone and RequireJS App
Chapter 10. Paginating Backbone.js Requests and Collections
Chapter 11. Backbone Boilerplate and Grunt-BBB
Chapter 12. Backbone and jQuery Mobile
Chapter 13. Jasmine
Chapter 14. QUnit
Chapter 15. SinonJS
Chapter 16. Conclusions

Appendix A. Further Learning
Appendix B. Resources