Question

What’s the difference between:

$(this.el).html

and

this.$el.html

Reading a few backbone examples and some do it one way and other another way.

Answer 1

$(this.el) wraps an element with jQuery (or Zepto). So, if your view HTML was this:

<div id="myViewElement"></div>

…and this.el referenced that div, then $(this.el) would be the equivalent of retrieving it directly via jQuery: $('#myViewElement').

this.$el is a cached reference to the jQuery (or Zepto) object, so a copy of what you would get from calling $(this.el). The intent is to save you the need to call $(this.el), which may have some overhead and therefor performance concerns.

Please note: the two are NOT equivalent. this.el alone is a reference to a host object HTMLElement — no libraries involved. This is the return of document.getElementById. $(this.el) creates a new instance of the jQuery/Zepto object. this.$el references a single instance of the former object. It is not “wrong” to use any of them, as long as you understand the costs of multiple calls to $(this.el).

In code:

this.ele = document.getElementById('myViewElement');
this.$ele = $('#myViewElement');

$('#myViewElement') == $(this.ele);

Also, it is worth mentioning that jQuery and Zepto have partial internal caches, so extra calls to $(this.el) might end up returning a cached result anyway, and that’s why I say “may have performance concerns”. It also may not.

Documentation

• view.$el – http://backbonejs.org/#View-$el
• $ in backbone – http://backbonejs.org/#View-dollar
• jQuery base object – http://api.jquery.com/jQuery/
• Zepto base object – http://zeptojs.com/#$()