Instant Backbone.js Application Development

Build your very first Backbone.js application covering all the essentials with this easy-to-follow introductory guide

Overview

• Learn something new in an Instant! A short, fast, focused guide delivering immediate results
• Structure your web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events
• Keep multiple clients and the server synchronized
• Persist data in an intuitive and consistent manner

In Detail

It’s easy to let a project get out of hand and become completely unmaintainable. However, this can be avoided by building a nicely-structured Backbone.js application. When working on a web application involving a lot of JavaScript, applications may end up as tangled piles of jQuery selectors and callbacks, all trying frantically to sync between the HTML UI, JavaScript logic, and the database on your server. With Backbone.js, you represent your data as models that can be created, validated, destroyed, and saved to the server.

Instant Backbone.js Application Development Starter is a beginner-friendly book that will guide you through a step-by-step process to go from an empty project directory to a fully-functioning web application. The book also includes code samples that are easy to use and will guide you through the major features that Backbone.js has to offer.

Instant Backbone.js Application Development Starter looks at the main types of objects that Backbone.js offers and has you instantiate specialized versions of each. These objects are stored in their own individual files and work together to build well-structured applications.

Your data will be stored using Collections and Models and presented to the user through Views and Templates. URLs will remain pretty and your browsing history will still work thanks to the Routing functionality. You will also learn how to build a JavaScript Single Page Application that communicates smoothly with your backend server using AJAX.

What you will learn from this book

• Use Models to store individual records of data
• Work with Collections to iterate over individual Models
• Utilize templates to make markup creation a breeze
• Present your data to your user through Views
• Trigger Events in your views
• Develop pretty URLs using the Routing class
• Keep a well-structured code directory
• Persist your data to a webserver

Approach

Get to grips with a new technology, understand what it is and what it can do for you, and then get to work with the most important features and tasks. This book is a practical, step-by-step tutorial that will teach you to build Backbone.js applications quickly and efficiently.

Who this book is written for

This book is targeted towards developers. It is assumed that you have at least a basic understanding of JavaScript and jQuery selectors. If you are interested in building dynamic Single Page Applications that interact heavily with a backend server, then this is the book for you.