Backbone.js Tutorial Part 1 - Backbone.js Models: Creating Models

Key Takeaways

models as the backbone author point out are the heart of any JavaScript application they contain the data as well as the logic around it for example we can use a model to represent the concept of a song with attributes such as title artist genre and so on let's see what it's like to define a model in the introduction lecture at the beginning of this section I sh showed you how to use the boilerplate template for the exercises in this course if you missed that lecture make sure to watch it before proceeding so here I've got main.js open in Sublime Text let's create our first model as you see we create a model by extending backbone. model the extend method returns a JavaScript Constructor function which is assigned to the song variable by convention Constructor functions start with a capital letter we can optionally supply an object to the extend method which determines the configuration of our model the initialized method here is automatically called by backbone when an object of this type is instantiated it's like a Constructor in C or Java terms let's log a message when an object of the type song is instantiated now to create an instance of this model we can use the new operator okay now let's see what a backbone model object really is so I'm going to save this file and then switch to Google Chrome here in Chrome you can open the developer tools us using F12 on Windows or option command and I on Mac we select the console tab note this message in the console this indicates that our song object has been instantiated properly now let's inspect the song object the attributes you see here are inherited from backbone. model as we go in this SES you will get more familiar with these attributes so so to create a model we extend backbone. model we can supply an initialized method which will be automatically called by backbone when a model is instantiated to create an instance of a model we use the new operator in the next lecture you will see how you can work with the attributes of a model