backbone-async

A function for making simple asynchronous requests in your Backbone applications by adding an async() function to both Backbone.Model and Backbone.Collection.

Backbone-async uses the url property of your collections and models to construct requests, so make sure those are defined.

Setup

You'll need to add an actions object to your model or collection, a basic example for a model:

actions: {
  "type": "GET" // type is optional
  "yelp_reviews": {
    success: function (response) {
      this.add("reviews", response.reviews);
    }
  }
}

Usage

If you haven't defined type:

// on a model, posts to something like "restaurants/12345/favorite"
restaurant.async().post("favorite");

// and to remove
restaurant.async().delete("favorite");


// on a collection, sends a get request to something like "restaurants/yelp_reviews"
// you can also pass data, here it would be a list of restaurant ids
restaurants.async().get("yelp_reviews", { ids: restaurantIDs });

If you've defined type you'll have to do something like this:

restaurant.async("favorite");
restaurant.async("unfavorite");

restaurants.async("yelp_reviews", { ids: [12345, 12346, 12347] });

Example

In a view right now you might have something like this:

events: {
  "click .heart": "favorite"
}

// ...

favorite: function () {
  $.ajax({
    type: "POST",
    url: this.model.url + "/favorite",
    success: $.proxy(function (response) {
      this.model.set("favorite", response.favorite);
    }, this)
  });
}

With backbone-async you'd move your success function to the model and end up with a view more like this:

events: {
  "click .heart": "favorite"
}

// ...

favorite: function () {
  this.model.async().post("favorite");
}

Easy as pie.