Question

I’m trying to download, parse and show a list, from the XML received from my server using Backbone.js. The code is like:

var Item = Backbone.collection.extend({
    url: "http://myurl.com/file.xml",
    parse: function() {
        console.log("parse");
    },
    success: function(data) {
        console.log(data);
    },
    error: function() {
        console.log("error");
    }
});

var View1=Backbone.view.extend({
    initialize: function() {
        var item = new Item();
        item.fetch();
    }
});

When I check it in the Chrome extension, the XML file is getting downloaded but the breakpoints placed in the parse, success, error directly lands to the error.

And it has 3 arguments, but I’m unable to extract any information from that.

Answer 1

Backbone does not support fetching XML, hence, you’ll need to override the sync method to provide your own custom parsing functionality. If you don’t want to have to mess with Backbone internals, try doing your $.ajax GET first, parse your response into a proper JSON Array and then use that array with a Backbone#Collection-reset.

Backbone#Collection-fetch

The server handler for fetch requests should return a JSON array of
models.

Backbone#Sync

With the default implementation, when Backbone.sync sends up a request
to save a model, its attributes will be passed, serialized as JSON,
and sent in the HTTP body with content-type application/json. When
returning a JSON response, send down the attributes of the model that
have been changed by the server, and need to be updated on the client.
When responding to a “read” request from a collection
(Collection#fetch), send down an array of model attribute objects.