Question

I have some code like this:

var User = function () {
  _.bindAll(this)

  this.UserList = Backbone.Collection.extend({
    model: UserModel
    // ...
  });

  this.UserListView = Backbone.View.extend({
  // ... etc
}

User.prototype.display = function() {
  var self = this
  self.collection = new self.UserList
  self.collection.fetch({
    success: function(collection, response) {
      self.users = new self.UserListView({
        collection: self.collection
      });
    }
  })
};


var user = new User()

route("users", function () {
  user.display()
})

My question is, is this going to cause memory issues? Every time the user arrives on the user/:userPage route the view, collection, etc are all going to be recreated. Will the old ones be deleted or do I have to delete it manually?

Should I be doing this:

User.prototype.display = function() {
  var self = this
  delete self.collection
  self.collection = new self.UserList
  self.collection.fetch({
    success: function(collection, response) {
      delete self.users
      self.users = new self.UserListView({
        collection: self.collection
      });
    }
  })
};

Also other general advice on my example code is appreciated too.

Answer 1

This is utterly useless:

   delete self.collection
   self.collection = new self.UserList

All delete does is remove collection field from the self object, and then you immediately recreate it. Just do the assignment.

I think that you think that delete self.collection should somehow cause the garbage-collection of the object pointed to by the field. It doesn’t.

Also, don’t use self as a variable name. The browser uses it to mean, uh, something.