Question

I have simple nested JSON:

{
  "user": {
      "name": "John",

      "related": {
          "name": "Alice",

          "related": {
              "name": "Bob" 
          }
      }
   }
}

And I have Backbone Relational model “User”:

(function(){
  var User = Backbone.RelationalModel.extend({
     defaults: {
       name: "",
       related: {}
     },
     // Linking this model to itself
     relations: [{
       type: Backbone.HasOne,
       key: "related",
       relatedModel: User // As I've expected it doesn't exist at this time
     }]
  })
})()

So, question is: How to link model to itself? Thank you!

Answer 1

Backbone.Relational “related” models need to be in an accessible scope, and in earlier versions of Backbone-Rel, it generally expected the models to be accessible in the global scope.

But, if you’re using Require.js, or wrapping your model definitions in a closure, they won’t be in that global scope.

This pull request deals with this situation. With the latest HEAD of Backbone-Rel, you can add in a custom scope for Backbone-Rel to look for related models in:

(function(){
    var models = {};
    Backbone.Relational.store.addModelScope(models);

    models.User = Backbone.RelationalModel.extend({
     defaults: {
       name: ""
     },
     // Linking this model to itself
     relations: [{
       type: Backbone.HasOne,
       key: "related",
       relatedModel: 'User'
     }]
    });

    var u1 = new models.User({
      name: "John",
      related: {
          name: "Alice",
          related: {
              name: "Bob" 
          }
      }
    });

    console.log(u1.toJSON());

})();

Live jsFiddle example: http://jsfiddle.net/edwardmsmith/BRmQF/16/