Question

The 2nd answer to this question nicely explains how event declarations in Backbone.js views are scoped to the view’s el element.

It seems like a reasonable use case to want to bind an event to an element outside the scope of el, e.g. a button on a different part of the page.

What is the best way of achieving this?

Answer 1

Update: This answer is no longer valid/right. Please see other answers below!

Why do you want to do this?

Apart from that, you could always just bind it using regular jQuery handlers. E.g.

$("#outside-element").click(this.myViewFunction);

IIRC, Backbone.js just uses the regular jQuery handlers, so you’re essentially doing the same thing, but breaking the scope 🙂