Question

I come from a very strict OOP flash background, and I’m really trying to get deeper into backbone, my question is this:

If I have classes for all views (much like in flash), are there any uses/benefits of the _.template functionality for me, or can i just overlook it for now?

Answer 1

Markup templating, whether with underscore or any other templating framework, is most definitely useful.

It seems that you see View classes and templates as somewhat of a either-or proposition., but that’s not really the case. They solve a different problem altogether; they complement each other, not replace.

A view class (Backbone.View in your case) scopes and encapsulates the view-related logic and event handling. This is great practice, and should be used whether or not you decide to use a templating engine.

Templates on the other hand simply transpose your data to the HTML, nothing more or less. This is something your view needs to do, and the way I see it, there are a few ways of achieving this:

• Build HTML by string concatenation
  • "<div>" + this.model.name + "</div>"… ugh)
• Fill DOM nodes with jQuery
  • $(".name").text(this.model.name) ad absurdum…
• Use some kind of data binding
  • Nice, but Backbone doesn’t support this out of the box.
  • Plugins do exist, though (Backbone.ModelBinding, Rivets, Stickit…)
• Use a templating engine
  • Lighter and simpler than databinding
  • Keeps representation separate from logic

Choice is yours, but I wouldn’t go without either a data binding or a templating framework. The templates provided by underscore are powerful, but I prefer semantic, logic-less templates such as Handlebars.