Comments on: Composite JavaScript Applications With Backbone And Backbone.Marionette

By: Dale Anderson

Dale Anderson — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:03:00 +0000

G’day Derick, this is cool stuff.

I’ve written a composite Javascript library built on top of knockout.js. For loose coupling, it uses a pubsub engine for communication between components. It works pretty well and is being used in a fairly sizeable product (yet to be released).

http://danderson00.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/introducing-knockoutcomposite.html

I’d love to hear what you think!

By: daman

daman — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 11:50:00 +0000

I am trying to build a complex app using Backbonne.Marionette with Boilerplate.

I am confused of how to use controller. The Backbone.Marionette.Layout has been used in the App.initAppLayout function in app.js

the controller is handling the route functions. i want to use controller function to
show view in a region. there are three regions – navmenu, content and footer
Please advise how I can attain this.

By: Derick Bailey

Derick Bailey — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:18:00 +0000

`addRegions` only works as a short cut to creating a region for you. it must be called before the “start” method, or it won’t instantiate the regions.

You can create your own region manager instances, though. I’ve updated the documentation for Marionette to point out how to do this in the “Marionette.RegionManager” section: https://github.com/derickbailey/backbone.marionette

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:24:00 +0000

Would it be possible to add a region that has been added dynamically to the body after the initial regions are defined?

I append a DIV element as part of my app and I wanted to add a region to the RegionManager that is contained within that dynamically added DIV.

I’ve used the addRegions method and that new region does appear in the MyApp.regions, but I’ve appeared to hit a snag with using the show method as it appears to indicate that MyApp.newRegion is undefined. Is there a step beyond the addRegions method that I’m missing?

By: Dan (Danny) Fellars

Dan (Danny) Fellars — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:21:00 +0000

Ah, great post. very helpful. Thanks again Derick!

By: Derick Bailey

Derick Bailey — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:16:00 +0000

Hi Dan,

Both of those options are valid – there’s nothing wrong with using the ItemView for a collection or using a CollectionView + ItemView for a collection. When you use each is the real question.

I’ve outlined a couple of scenarios and guidelines for this in another post: http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/10/11/backbone-js-getting-the-model-for-a-clicked-element/

The title is a bit misleading because it was in response to a specific question I’ve seen multiple times, but it covers exactly these two scenarios in the answer. There are other good reasons for when to use which, as well. That post covers a few of the basics, though.

Hope that helps.

By: Dan (Danny) Fellars

Dan (Danny) Fellars — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:15:00 +0000

Derick, I’m continuing to play with Marionette and have another question. I’m struggling with when to use a CollectionView instead of an ItemView whose template has a {{each}} loop in the template. Can you think of use cases where one is better than other? It seems that if your Collection has any kind of global info (like a header to a list), then it needs to be an ItemView.

By: Khurram Hanif

Khurram Hanif — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 22:47:00 +0000

Great work. Perhaps you should also look into http://angularjs.org
Yet another JS framework which I found more simple than Backbone and already ships a number of features not available in other frameworks (Composite apps).

By: Derick Bailey

Derick Bailey — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:45:00 +0000

I looked at LayoutManager a week ago and really liked what I saw. By the time I started playing with it, though, I already had a lot of code in place for the project that Marionette came out of. I spent an hour or two looking at LayoutManager to see if I could replace what I had. I think I have a few different opinions on how I want to build Backbone apps, compared to Tim’s LayoutManager… so I extracted Marionette from my project instead of trying to rebuild that app on top of LayoutManager. I’m sure there’s a ton of overlap between what I started here and what Tim is doing. I really need to dig deeper into LayoutManager more and see if I’m heading in the same direction or not.

If anyone else is looking for a composite app structure for Backbone, be sure to check out Tim’s project: https://github.com/tbranyen/backbone.layoutmanager

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 03:15:00 +0000

This looks pretty useful, seeing as how right now I can’t decide how to handle creating a new “region” for my app (listing a library of items and providing a search interface).

One question, how does your RegionManager differ from Backbone.LayoutManager? I haven’t looked into that too much but I thought it does pretty much the same? Sounds like you can choose to use that along with Marionette anyway, though.