Perverted style of MVC? Yes, Backbone doesn't tell you how to use its objects, it feels like it is saying
"Here's 3-4 Javascript objects that we like. They work great together! They have built-in behavior, which makes it awesome! However, there's a lot that ISN'T built-in, and we leave that to you to figure out. But this is what makes Backbone flexible! Great, isn't it?"
Some questions I find myself asking: How should I structure my JS app? View-centric, model-centric, or collection-centric? I would like to just manage the Javascript side of the app - just worrying about the collections or models. If I add a new model to a collection, it should automatically render the change collection to the page. I have found no examples for a model-centric app like this. I find myself with a machete in a jungle, hacking my through the objects and their relationships, trying to find the path that the Backbone designer has left for me to find.
Looking through the Stackoverflow questions and answers, it seems that it is possible to create view-only apps with Backbone. This confirms my suspicion that I've been using Backbone in a backwards way, trying to create my models first. One thing I learned today is that the idea of a Backbone View is that it 'resolves' to an HTML tree that can be applied to the page's DOM. That is, your master 'AppView' is meant to create sub-views, then request their HTML rendering to apply onto the page. Frick! This makes no sense! So the view can't actually render itself on the page? It requires a parent view to place it in the correct place? No! Maybe if I understood the capabilities of Javascript a bit better, I could make Backbone do it this way, but I was not successful.
Next time I try to fix this app, I'll take the view-centric approach. I'll have my master AppView spawn child views, then pass them a model to hold its data. It's a very silly way of approaching the problem, but I'll do it. I'll do it just to see if backbone actually works with Visualforce. Then, I'll look into optimizing the architecture, unless I move onto a better JS MVC framework.
Since I've been taking this 'backwards' model-centric approach, I'll change gears when I stab at this project next. That will work, for sure. Then, I'll try using Spine.js, which looks like it has a much more sane architecture. Also, Spine is appealing because client interactions are completely decoupled from the server, which sounds like the ideal remedy for the slow response times between Visualforce pages and their Salesforce servers.
Looking through the Stackoverflow questions and answers, it seems that it is possible to create view-only apps with Backbone. This confirms my suspicion that I've been using Backbone in a backwards way, trying to create my models first. One thing I learned today is that the idea of a Backbone View is that it 'resolves' to an HTML tree that can be applied to the page's DOM. That is, your master 'AppView' is meant to create sub-views, then request their HTML rendering to apply onto the page. Frick! This makes no sense! So the view can't actually render itself on the page? It requires a parent view to place it in the correct place? No! Maybe if I understood the capabilities of Javascript a bit better, I could make Backbone do it this way, but I was not successful.
Next time I try to fix this app, I'll take the view-centric approach. I'll have my master AppView spawn child views, then pass them a model to hold its data. It's a very silly way of approaching the problem, but I'll do it. I'll do it just to see if backbone actually works with Visualforce. Then, I'll look into optimizing the architecture, unless I move onto a better JS MVC framework.
Since I've been taking this 'backwards' model-centric approach, I'll change gears when I stab at this project next. That will work, for sure. Then, I'll try using Spine.js, which looks like it has a much more sane architecture. Also, Spine is appealing because client interactions are completely decoupled from the server, which sounds like the ideal remedy for the slow response times between Visualforce pages and their Salesforce servers.
Judging from your comments you may really like the ExtJS MVC framework. You can define the model first, then views that reflect that underlying data; changes to the data spawn events that propagate to view updates. It's also "opinionated" vs. the toolkit approach of Backbone; how to accomplish a particular task is usually fairly clear.
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