Backbonejs - use nested object as id attribute

Question

Is it possible to use a nested object as the id attribute in Backbone?

For e.g. something like,

var MyModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
        defaults : {
            'info': {
                'name': ""
            },
        },
        idAttribute: "info.name"
}

BTW, the above doesn't work as an ID, I added it here just to give an idea of what I was trying to achieve.

TIA

If you have something mutable (such as an {info: { ... } } object) in your defaults, use a defaults function instead of an object literal. The defaults are shallow copied so you're going to end up changing the prototype's defaults and wonder why all your models have changed. — mu is too short
– mu is too short, Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 16:17

Sushanth -- · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-18 09:13:02Z

4

I don't think you can directly assign a nested object as an idAttribute .

But you can directly set the id on the model when the response is served by the server in the parse method

parse: function(response) {
   response.id = response.info.name;
   return response;
}

edited Jun 18, 2013 at 9:13

answered Jun 18, 2013 at 9:01

Sushanth --

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2 Comments

jon skulski Over a year ago

Just a note that not supporting nested idAttributes is by design and will not change: github.com/jashkenas/backbone/pull/598

edan Over a year ago

This won't always work as you expect, because models are not parsed before they are set on the collection. Calling collection.fetch({ remove: false }) will therefore result in duplicate models. See this jsfiddle.

Luke · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-18 09:20:00Z

0

as @Sushanth says, parse is for sure a good way to do this.

But generally using nested objects within Backbone Models is unsafe and not the best way to do it. When you change your response.info.name property, and you bind events to response.info, you will not get notified.

After a few years with Backbone, I would like to tell you, that parsing your received models from server into primitive objects is the best you can do.

If you want your models to go back to server exactly the same way they came in, you could override the toJSON function, which could transform it back. Of course, you need to implement those two... :/

answered Jun 18, 2013 at 9:20

Luke

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