Question

I am starting developing an application with backbone+require. I want to share a same instance of a Model between several views. I have defined the model as a singleton, and thus all the views access the same instance of the model.

I have evaluated two options:

1.Use Events with the instance of the Model as a parameter to communicate views

2.Share the same instance of the model between views.

I have chosen the second option, adding a new line to my Model:

define(['Underscore','Backbone'], 
function(_, Backbone) {
    var Experience = Backbone.Model.extend({
        defaults: {
            'id' : 1,           
            'date' : '2012-10-11 '
        }
    });
     if (this.model === undefined)   return  new Experience();
});

And then I bind the model to my views

define([ 'jQuery','Underscore','Backbone','models/experience'
], function($, _, Backbone, Experience){
  var MyView1 = Backbone.View.extend({     
            initialize: function () {               
                this.model = Experience;
                ....

This way, all the views with this model share it.

Is there a better way for sharing instances of a model in backbone? Would it be better to use events and the instances as parameters?

Answer 1

IMHO a Singleton is the way to go in your case.

Passing instances to views would be useful in case of a very generic view that is shared between a lot o models and as far as I can see it’s not your case.