Marionette.Object

A base class which other classes can extend from. Object incorporates many backbone conventions and utilities like initialize and Backbone.Events. Object has all of the Common Marionette Functionality.

Documentation Index

• Initialize
• Events
• Radio Events
• Destroying An Object
• Basic Use

Initialize

initialize is called immediately after the Object has been instantiated, and is invoked with the same arguments that the constructor received.

var Mn = require('backbone.marionette');

var Friend = Mn.Object.extend({
  initialize: function(options){
    console.log(options.name);
  }
});

new Friend({name: 'John'});

Live example

Events

Marionette.Object extends Backbone.Events and includes triggerMethod. This makes it easy for Objects to emit events that other objects can listen for with on or listenTo.

var Mn = require('backbone.marionette');

var Friend = Mn.Object.extend({
  graduate: function() {
    this.triggerMethod('announce', 'I graduated!!!');
  }
});

var john = new Friend({name: 'John'});

john.on('announce', function(message) {
  console.log(message); // I graduated!!!
})

john.graduate();

Live example

Radio Events

Marionette.Object integrates with Backbone.Radio to provide powerful messaging capabilities. Objects can respond to both of Radio's message types: Events and Requests. If radio either Events or Requests wanted to be used then channelName property is required to be set.

channelName: 'myChannel',
radioEvents: {
  'some:event': 'eventHandler'
},

radioRequests: {
  'some:request': 'requestHandler'
},

Live example

In this example the object will listen for the some:request request on the myChannel channel, and run the 'requestHandler' method. When using Radio Requests with Objects, the same rules and restrictions that normal Radio use implies also apply here: a single handler can be associated with a request, either through manual use of the reply functions, or through the Object API.

Destroying an Object

Objects have a destroy method that unbind the events that are directly attached to the instance. destroy returns the object.

Invoking the destroy method will trigger before:destroy and destroy events and their corresponding methods.

Note The event handlers will be passed any arguments destroy was invoked with.

var Mn = require('backbone.marionette');

// define a object with an onDestroy method
var MyObject = Mn.Object.extend({

  onBeforeDestroy: function(arg1, arg2){
    // put other custom clean-up code here
  }

});

// create a new object instance
var obj = new MyObject();

// add some event handlers
obj.on('before:destroy', function(arg1, arg2){ ... });
obj.listenTo(something, 'bar', function(){...});

// destroy the object: unbind all of the
// event handlers, trigger the "destroy" event and
// call the onDestroy method
obj.destroy(arg1, arg2);

Basic Use

Selections is a simple Object that manages a selection of things. Because Selections extends from Object, it gets initialize and Events for free.

var Mn = require('backbone.marionette');

var Selections = Mn.Object.extend({

  initialize: function(options){
    this.selections = {};
  },

  select: function(key, item){
    this.triggerMethod('select', key, item);
    this.selections[key] = item;
  },

  deselect: function(key, item) {
    this.triggerMethod('deselect', key, item);
    delete this.selections[key];
  }

});

var selections = new Selections({
  filters: Filters
});

// use the built in EventBinder
selections.listenTo(selections, 'select', function(key, item){
  console.log(item);
});

selections.select('toy', Truck);