Question

i try to fetch a record of a rails-api (same host) into my backbone collection. i have the following code:

// Models

App.GeeksModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
  urlRoot: "/geeks",
  idAttribute: "id"
});

// Collections

App.GeeksCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
  url: "/geeks",
  model: App.GeeksModel
});

in my router i have the following

// Router

App.GeekRouter = Backbone.Router.extend({
  routes: {
    "": "index"
  },
  initialize: function() {
    console.log("router - init");
  },
  index: function() {
    console.log("route - index");
    var geekCollection = new App.GeeksCollection();
    var mapView = new App.GeeksMapView({ el: $("#foo"), model: geekCollection });
    geekCollection.fetch();
  }
});

when browsing the url, the view loads correctly and at the server i see, that one entry is fetched from the database. but as soon as i check the model length in my view using

this.model.length

the collection is empty… any advice on this?

thanks

EDIT 1:

when changing the index router method to

var mapView = new App.GeeksMapView({ el: $("#map"), collection: geekCollection });

and e.g. check for the collection length in the views intialize method

  ...
  initialize: function() {
    this.render();
    console.log(this.collection.length);
  },
  ...

it retunes 0 as well… so nothing changed!

Answer 1

I believe you want to do collection.length or if accessing from the model – each model holds reference to collection in which it was created model.collection.length – if this is referencing to collection doing just this.length should be enough, if it’s a model then this.collection.length will do it for you.

Models have no property length so should always be undefined unless you define it yourself.