Question

What is backbone’s convention/best practice for retrieving data from a RESTful web service, based on data entered in a form?

From what I understand I can register a click observer in the view, so when the form submit button is clicked the view will retrieve the data from the form. But I’m unclear on whether I execute the AJAX call from the view, model, or router.

Essentially, I’m unclear as to which of the following is convention:

1. Have the view get the parameters, execute the AJAX call and then pass the returned JSON to the model
2. Have the view get the parameters and pass them to the model and have it execute the AJAX call and retrieve the data from the web service
3. Have the view get the parameters and pass them to a router and have it execute the AJAX call and populate the appropriate model and view accordingly?

NOTE: I need to submit search criteria to a RESTful Web Service, which expects the data to be POSTed; correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem like I can use: fetch or save. Should I create a function within the model that uses $.ajax({…}) to post the params and receive the JSON data?

Answer 1

The backbone.js models are already setup to do RESTful requests. Method 2 is what you want to do.

The only thing you have to setup in the model is a URL:

MyModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
    url: 'http://path/to/my/RESTful/service'
});

MyView = Backbone.View.extend({
   events: {
       'submit #myform': 'saveToModel'
   },

   initialize: function() {
       // ...
   },

   saveToModel: function() {
       // this triggers a RESTFul POST (or PUT) request to the URL specified in the model
       this.model.save({
          'foo': 'Foo!',
          'bar': 'Bar!'
       });
   }


});