Question

I just realized I was misunderstanding the el attribute of a Backbone.View. Basically my views require dynamic id attributes based on its model’s attribute. I thought I had this working fine because I simply specified it in my template:

<script type="text/template" id="item_template">
  <li class="item" id="{{identifier}}">
    <span class="name">{{name}}</span>
  </li>
</script>

However, I realized that what Backbone was actually doing was putting this compiled template into another element, div by default. I learned more about this by reading the documentation, but I’m still confused on how to create a dynamic id.

Preferably, I would love to find a way to make it such that the stuff in the above template serves as my el, since it already has everything I want, but I don’t know if that is possible. So I’m wondering if, quite simply, there is a way to specify a dynamic id attribute.

I tried setting it within the initialize method, this.id = this.model.get('attr') but it didn’t seem to have any effect, possibly because by this time it is already too late.

What I’m currently doing is just using jQuery to add the id in during render():

this.el.attr(id: this.model.get('identifier'));

it works, but of course, I’m simply asking if there is a preferred way to do it through Backbone.

Answer 1

Yes there is a standard way to do this in Backbone. You can pass id to the View constructor. You can also refactor your template so that Backbone creates the parent <li> element for you. Try this simpler template:

<script type="text/template" id="item_template">
  <span class="name">{{name}}</span>
</script>

And add these to your view:

myView = Backbone.View.extend({
  className: "item",
  tagName: "li"
})

And instantiate it like this:

var view = new YourView({
  model: mymodel,
  id: mymodel.get('identifier') // or whatever
})

Good luck!