Backbone and Rails Nested Routes - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have the following routes defined in rails:
resources :accounts do
resources :transactions
end
This results in urls like:
/accounts/123/transactions/1
Is there an easy way to map this to a backbone model set up?

Answer 1

Turns out backbone quite easily supports this by nesting a collection in a model as follows:
var Account = Backbone.Model.extend({
initialize: function() {
this.transactions = new TransactionsCollection;
this.transactions.url = '/account/' + this.id + '/transactions';
this.transactions.bind("reset", this.updateCounts);
},
});
This achieves exactly what I wanted.
You can read more about it here: http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#FAQ-nested

Answer 2

It might not be an easy way but I think the best way is to use url and set it to a function like this:
var Transaction = Backbone.Model.extend({
url: function(){
var url = 'accounts/"+this.account_id+"/transactions';
if (this.id !== undefined){
url += "/"+this.id
}
return url;
}
});
Or maybe in coffeescript (as it is backbone+rails):
class Transaction extends Backbone.Model
url: ->
url = "accounts/#{#account_id}/transactions"
url += "/#{#id}" if #id != undefined
url
Oh and you could do it more like this(surely with deeper nesting it's better):
var url = ["accounts", this.account_id, "transactions"]
if (this.id !== undefined) url.push(this.id)
return url.join("/")
AFAIK there is now url utility in backbone, and it's not much enough pain for me so that I would search for one in some other library :)

Answer 3

Backbone does not directly support the creating of nested urls. You must use a function to dynamically calculate the resulting url of your nested object. For example:
var Account = Backbone.Model.extend({
initialize: function() {
this.transactions = new TransactionsCollection();
var self = this;
this.transactions.url = function () {return self.url + self.id + '/transactions';};
// etc
},
});
More information: http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#FAQ-nested

Answer 4

Just define the url of your model or (if you use one) your collection like so:
var MyModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
url: 'accounts/123/transactions'
});
or dynamically:
mymodel.url = 'accounts/' + accountId + '/transactions';
Those models or all models of a collection that is configured this way will now generate it's backend urls accordingly.
Detailed info:
Model:
http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#Model-url
Collection:
http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#Collection-url