CODEWITHSUNDEEP
backbone.jsbackbone-views
broersa
broersa

Reputation: 1736

Should I call render after each collection change in BackboneJS

I'm learning BackboneJS. I have a few questions. Is it a common thing to rerender the complete view after the contoller or model is changed? And do I need to clear to container at the start of the render function?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 823

Answers (2)

mvbl fst
mvbl fst

Reputation: 5263

1) Re-rendering a complete view is actually easier than updating parts of the view, as long as the view itself is reasonably atomic.

2) No, you don't need to clear container and it has nothing to do with Backbone but with your DOM library, e.g. jQuery, and your templating engine, e.g. Handlebars. So what you do is either

this.$el.html(this.template(data)); // template is a compiled Handlebars template

or 

this.$el.html($('<div />').text('Whatever'); // using jQuery

In any case, $el.html re-inserts HTML to the target element of the view.

Upvotes: 1

Jack
Jack

Reputation: 10993

First you don't need to clear the container at the start of your render function (unless of course you want to clear the container).

As for your first point, It obviously depends on your circumstances (how complex is the view), but while it may pay sometimes to just rerender the entire view overwriting the previous contents, you don't need to do so. In backbone.js you can listen to changes on particular attributes and then since you have access to the DOM element just update part of the view accordingly.

for example 

initialize : function () {    _.bind("change:name", nameChanged, this); },

nameChanged: function(event) {    this.$el.find('.name').val(this.model.get('name'); }

Upvotes: 1

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