Question

I’m trying to follow a screencast on how to return a result from a database using Backbone.js and REST. My RESTful service (at least I think it’s RESTful — REST is new to me) is serving up JSON data like you would want. Everything appears to work fine until the last step when I try to access the data using at(). Here is my code.

This is my Backbone:

(function() {
    window.App = {
        Models: {},
        Collections: {},
        Views: {},
        Router: {}  
    };

    window.template = function(id) {
        return _.template( $('#' + id).html());
    };

    var vent = _.extend({}, Backbone.Events);

    App.Router = Backbone.Router.extend({
        routes: {
            '' : 'index',
            '*other' : 'other'
        },
        index: function() {

        },
        other: function() {

        }
    });


    App.Models.Main = Backbone.Model.extend({
        defaults : {
            FName: ''
        }
    });

    App.Collections.Mains = Backbone.Collection.extend({
        model: App.Models.Main,
        url: '../leads/main_contact'
    });

    new App.Router;
    Backbone.history.start();
})();

In the Firebug console, which is what’s used in Jeffrey Way’s screencast, I type the following:

mains = new App.Collections.Mains();
mains.fetch();
mains.toJSON();

That works fine. I can use Firebug to see that there is the proper data there. Here is my result:

[Object { id="1023",  timestamp="2012-05-16 08:09:30",  FName="Eulàlia",  more...},...

But when I try to access the object with the id of 1023, I get “undefined.” I do this:

mains.at(1023).get('FName');

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

the at method retrieves an element at a specific index in the collection.

So if you want to get the element at position 1023, you need 1023 items in your collection. Which you probally don’t have.

The id that you have and set to 1023 has nothing to do with index in that collection.