How to update the whole Backbone.js collection that in database? - javascript

I have a collection (an object list) in database. I can fetch it like: collectionModel.fetch()
But then user changes something on that collection. When user clickes on save button, the whole collection list must be update in database. I thought maybe i can delete() the old one first and then create() it with new one but i could'n achive it. I can't use the update() method because in this case i should find which collection elements has changed but i want to update whole list. How can i do that? Thanks for help.

Do you have a REST api in front of that database? That's how Backbone is made to work with. When your JavaScript code runs model.save(); a PUT request is made to your api for that model.
You question is about saving the whole collection, for that if you want to remain within the default implementation of Backbone you will have to go over all the models in the collection and call save for each of them.
If you want to make one single request to your server you will have to implement a custom method inside your collection. Something like:
MyCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
saveAll: function() {
var data = this.toJSON();
return Backbone.$.ajax({
data: { objects: data },
url: '/url/in/your/server/to/update/db'
});
}
});
That's going to send the array of all models in your collection converted to JSON to your server.
Again, you want to have a RESTful API on the server side if you want to make your life with Backbone easy.

If you want to reset collection you have to specify "reset" attribute.
collectionList.fetch({
reset: true,
...
});
But I think it's better to just update it:
collectionList.fetch({
remove: false,
update: true,
merge: true,
...
});

This is a very old question, but I had another approach so I thought I'd post it.
Sometimes my collections have a lot of data and the server doesn't get it all. I solved this by using one of the underscore methods that backbone collections have, invoke (also relies on jquery):
MyCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
update: function(callback) {
// Invoke the update method on all models
$.when.apply($, this.invoke('update')).then(() => {
// After complete call the callback method (if passsed)
if(callback) {
callback();
}
});
}
});
You can use it by calling collection.update() when the collection has models in it. A similar method can be used for creating or deleting collections, and this should be modifiable to catch errors but I didn't account for that.

Related

grab multiple instances of ID within an application

I have the below that is setup and working properly.
require(['models/profile'], function (SectionModel) {
var sectionModel = new SectionModel({id: merchantId, silent: true});
sectionModel.fetch({
success: function (data) {
$('#merchant-name').html(data.attributes.merchantName);
}
});
});
But it will only work in one instance. I am wondering how to correctly edit the above code to allow multiple instances.
<h3 id="merchant-name"></h3>
The content is generated within 'Save' function.
merchantName:$('#merchantName').val(),
What you want to do is set up the rest of the components for the Backbone application. The beauty of Backbone.js is it's ability to separate collections, models and views so your logic stays in a proper place.
You'll want to use an AJAX call to retrieve your models from the server using a Collection. Then, use the collection's reset function.
Here's an example of how you might fetch a collection of models from the server.
var MyCollectionType = Backbone.Collection.extend({
getModelsFromServer:function()
{
var me = this;
function ajaxSuccess(data, textStatus, jqXHR)
{
me.reset(data);
}
$.ajax(/* Insert the ajax params here*/);
}
});
var collectionInstance = new MyCollectionType({
model:YourModelTypeHere
});
collectionInstance.getModelsFromServer();
Then, to render each one, you'll want to make a View for each model, and a Collection View. There are a lot of resources though on learning basic Backbone.js and I feel that you might benefit from looking at a few of those.
Keep in mind that Backbone collections will by default merge models with the same id. 'id' usually references a model in the backend of an application, so make sure each id is actually what you want it to be. I work with an application that has a non-Restfull back end, and so ID's are never transferred to the front end.
There are some excellent resources available to begin starting with Backbone.js.
https://www.codeschool.com/courses/anatomy-of-backbonejs
(This is a free course up to a point, and a great starter.)
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/getting-started-with-backbone-js/
http://javascriptissexy.com/learn-backbone-js-completely/

BackboneJS collection.reset() vs collection.fetch()

I have read and read the docs on these two methods, but for the life of me cannot work out why you might use one over the other?
Could someone just give me a basic code situation where one would be application and the other wouldn't.
reset sets the collection with an array of models that you specify:
collection.reset( [ { name: "model1" }, { name: "model2" } ] );
fetch retrieves the collection data from the server, using the URL you've specified for the collection.
collection.fetch( { url: someUrl, success: function(collection) {
// collection has values from someUrl
} } );
Here's a Fiddle illustrating the difference.
We're assuming here that you've read the documentation, else it'l be a little confusing here.
If you look at documentation of fetch and reset, what it says is, suppose you have specified the url property of the collection - which might be pointing to some server code, and should return a json array of models, and you want the collection to be filled with the models being returned, you will use fetch.
For example you have the following json being returned from the server on the collection url:
[{
id : 1,
name : "a"
}, {
id : 2,
name : "b"
}, {
id : 3,
name : "c"
}]
Which will create 3 models in your collection after successful fetch. If you hunt for the code of collection fetch here you will see that fetch will get the response and internally will call either reset or add based on options specified.
So, coming back to discussion, reset assumes that we already have json of models, which we want to be stored in collection, we will pass it as a parameter to it. In your life, ever if you want to update the collection and you already have the models on client side, then you don't need to use fetch, reset will do your job.
Hence, if you want to the same json to be filled in the collection with the help of reset you can do something like this:
var _self = this;
$.getJSON("url", function(response) {
_self.reset(response); // assuming response returns the same json as above
});
Well, this is not a practice to be followed, for this scenario fetch is better, its just used for example.
Another example of reset is on the documentation page.
Hope it gives a little bit of idea and makes your life better :)
reset() is used for replacing collection with new array. For example:
#collection.reset(#full_collection.models)
would load #full_collections models, however
#collection.reset()
would return empty collection.
And fetch() function returns default collection of model

Backbone: Adding a model to a collection from a collection view?

I have some code where I want a NoteCollectionView to add a new Note to the NoteCollection. This is triggered by a function newNote in the NoteCollectionView:
newNote: function(data) {
var note = new Note(data);
this.collection.add(note);
},
I'm still very new to backbone, and I want to make sure this syncs with the server. The concerns I have are:
1) Will simply adding this note to the collection trigger a save() from the server, and update the model with the ID that the server gives it? Or,
2) If the server does not update my model and give me an actual ID, how do I save the model with note.save() and get back an ID from the server?
To address your first question, no, .add will not trigger any kind of call to the server; it will only add a model to a collection.
However, you do have a couple options. One would be to create the new note model, save it to the database, and then add it to the collection:
newNote: function(data) {
var note = new Note(data);
note.save();
this.collection.add(note);
}
The second option is to simply use Backbone's collection.create method. Give it a hash of attributes and it will
Create the model
Save it to the database
Add it to the collection
All in one fell swoop, like so:
newNote: function(data) {
return this.collection.create(data);
}
collection.create also returns the newly created model, illustrated by my return statement above.

backbone.js cache collections and refresh

I have a collection that can potentially contain thousands of models. I have a view that displays a table with 50 rows for each page.
Now I want to be able to cache my data so that when a user loads page 1 of the table and then clicks page 2, the data for page 1 (rows #01-50) will be cached so that when the user clicks page 1 again, backbone won't have to fetch it again.
Also, I want my collection to be able to refresh updated data from the server without performing a RESET, since RESET will delete all the models in a collection, including references of existing model that may exist in my app. Is it possible to fetch data from the server and only update or add new models if necessary by comparing the existing data and the new arriving data?
In my app, I addressed the reset question by adding a new method called fetchNew:
app.Collection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
// fetch list without overwriting existing objects (copied from fetch())
fetchNew: function(options) {
options = options || {};
var collection = this,
success = options.success;
options.success = function(resp, status, xhr) {
_(collection.parse(resp, xhr)).each(function(item) {
// added this conditional block
if (!collection.get(item.id)) {
collection.add(item, {silent:true});
}
});
if (!options.silent) {
collection.trigger('reset', collection, options);
}
if (success) success(collection, resp);
};
return (this.sync || Backbone.sync).call(this, 'read', this, options);
}
});
This is pretty much identical to the standard fetch() method, except for the conditional statement checking for item existence, and using add() by default, rather than reset. Unlike simply passing {add: true} in the options argument, it allows you to retrieve sets of models that may overlap with what you already have loaded - using {add: true} will throw an error if you try to add the same model twice.
This should solve your caching problem, assuming your collection is set up so that you can pass some kind of page parameter in options to tell the server what page of options to send back. You'll probably want to add some sort of data structure within your collection to track which pages you've loaded, to avoid doing unnecessary requests, e.g.:
app.BigCollection = app.Collection.extend({
initialize: function() {
this.loadedPages = {};
},
loadPage: function(pageNumber) {
if (!this.loadedPages[pageNumber]) {
this.fetchNew({
page: pageNumber,
success: function(collection) {
collection.loadedPages[pageNumber] = true;
}
})
}
}
});
Backbone.Collection.fetch has an option {add:true} which will add models into a collection instead of replacing the contents.
myCollection.fetch({add:true})
So, in your first scenario, the items from page2 will get added to the collection.
As far as your 2nd scenario, there's currently no built in way to do that.
According to Jeremy that's something you're supposed to do in your App, and not part of Backbone.
Backbone seems to have a number of issues when being used for collaborative apps where another user might be updating models which you have client side. I get the feeling that Jeremy seems to focus on single-user applications, and the above ticket discussion exemplifies that.
In your case, the simplest way to handle your second scenario is to iterate over your collection and call fetch() on each model. But, that's not very good for performance.
For a better way to do it, I think you're going to have to override collection._add, and go down the line dalyons did on this pull request.
I managed to get update in Backbone 0.9.9 core. Check it out as it's exactly what you need http://backbonejs.org/#Collection-update.

Persisting & loading metadata in a backbone.js collection

I have a situation using backbone.js where I have a collection of models, and some additional information about the models. For example, imagine that I'm returning a list of amounts: they have a quantity associated with each model. Assume now that the unit for each of the amounts is always the same: say quarts. Then the json object I get back from my service might be something like:
{
dataPoints: [
{quantity: 5 },
{quantity: 10 },
...
],
unit : quarts
}
Now backbone collections have no real mechanism for natively associating this meta-data with the collection, but it was suggested to me in this question: Setting attributes on a collection - backbone js that I can extend the collection with a .meta(property, [value]) style function - which is a great solution. However, naturally it follows that we'd like to be able to cleanly retrieve this data from a json response like the one we have above.
Backbone.js gives us the parse(response) function, which allows us to specify where to extract the collection's list of models from in combination with the url attribute. There is no way that I'm aware of, however, to make a more intelligent function without overloading fetch() which would remove the partial functionality that is already available.
My question is this: is there a better option than overloading fetch() (and trying it to call it's superclass implementation) to achieve what I want to achieve?
Thanks
Personally, I would wrap the Collection inside another Model, and then override parse, like so:
var DataPointsCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({ /* etc etc */ });
var CollectionContainer = Backbone.Model.extend({
defaults: {
dataPoints: new DataPointsCollection(),
unit: "quarts"
},
parse: function(obj) {
// update the inner collection
this.get("dataPoints").refresh(obj.dataPoints);
// this mightn't be necessary
delete obj.dataPoints;
return obj;
}
});
The Collection.refresh() call updates the model with new values. Passing in a custom meta value to the Collection as previously suggested might stop you from being able to bind to those meta values.
This meta data does not belong on the collection. It belongs in the name or some other descriptor of the code. Your code should declaratively know that the collection it has is only full of quartz elements. It already does since the url points to quartz elements.
var quartzCollection = new FooCollection();
quartzCollection.url = quartzurl;
quartzCollection.fetch();
If you really need to get this data why don't you just call
_.uniq(quartzCollecion.pluck("unit"))[0];

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