< >

Marionette Events

The Marionette Event system provides a system for objects to communicate with each other in a uniform way. In Marionette, this typically involves objects (models, collections, and views) triggering events that other objects (typically views) listen to and act on.

This section will mostly deal with View events and the semantics and methods of responding to events.

This section will not cover events from models and collections. See the documentation for View.

Documentation Index

Triggering and Listening to Events

The traditional event handling system in Backbone is also supported in Marionette. Marionette, however, provides an alternative event system using the triggerMethod method on Marionette.Object - the key difference between the two is that triggerMethod triggers magically named event handlers on views. This section covers how triggerMethod works and how listeners are set up to handle it.

View triggerMethod

The triggerMethod method fires the named event on the view - any listeners will then be triggered on the event. If there are no listeners, this call will still succeed. All arguments after the first argument will be passed to all event handlers.

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

var MyView = Mn.View.extend({
  callMethod: function(myString) {
    console.log(myString + ' was passed');
  }
});

var myView = new MyView();
/* See Backbone.listenTo */
myView.on('something:happened', myView.callMethod, myView);

/* Calls callMethod('foo'); */
myView.triggerMethod('something:happened', 'foo');

The triggerMethod call comes from the trigger-method mixin that is also part of Marionette.Object and its subclasses like Marionette.Application. This documentation also applies.

Listening to Events

Marionette's event triggers work just like regular Backbone events - you can use view.on and view.listenTo to act on events:

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

var MyView = Mn.View.extend({
  initialize: function() {
    this.on('event:happened', this.logCall);
  },

  logCall: function(myVal) {
    console.log(myVal);
  }
});

You can also use listenTo as in Backbone:

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

var OtherView = Mn.View.extend({
  initialize: function(someView) {
    this.listenTo(someView, 'event:happened', this.logCall);
  },

  logCall: function(myVal) {
    console.log(myVal);
  }
});

var MyView = Mn.View.extend();

var myView = new MyView();

var otherView = new OtherView(myView);

As in Backbone, listenTo will pass the object it is called on in as the context variable. These behave exactly as in Backbone, so using object.on will require you to unhook any event handlers yourself to prevent memory leaks. Marionette, however, does provide extra helpers as part of the view lifecycle that bind and unbind event handlers for you. this is the core of Magic Method Binding.

Magic Method Binding

The major difference between Backbone.trigger and View.triggerMethod is that triggerMethod can fire specially named events on the attached view. For instance, a view that has been rendered will fire view.triggerMethod('render') and call onRender - providing a handy way to add behavior to your views.

Determining what method an event will call is easy, we will outline this with an example using before:dom:refresh though this also works with any custom events you want to fire:

  1. Split the words around the : characters - so before, dom, refresh
  2. Capitalize the first letter of each word - Before, Dom, Refresh
  3. Add a leading on - on, Before, Dom, Refresh
  4. Mash it into a single call - onBeforeDomRefresh

Using this process, before:dom:refresh will call the onBeforeDomRefresh method. Let's see it in action with a custom event:

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

var MyView = Mn.View.extend({
  onMyEvent: function(myVal) {
    console.log(myVal);
  }
});

var myView = new MyView();

myView.triggerMethod('my:event', 'someValue'); // Logs 'someValue'

As before, all arguments passed into triggerMethod will make their way into the event handler. Using this method ensures there will be no unexpected memory leaks.

View events and triggers

Views can automatically bind DOM events to methods and View events with events and triggers respectively:

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

var MyView = Mn.View.extend({
  events: {
    'click a': 'showModal'
  },

  triggers: {
    'keyup input': 'data:entered'
  },

  showModal: function(event) {
    console.log('Show the modal');
  },

  onDataEntered: function() {
    console.log('Data was entered');
  }
});

For more information, see the view documentation.

Child View Events

The View and CollectionView are able to monitor and act on events on any children they own. Any events fired on a view are automatically propagated to their direct parents as well. Let's see a quick example:

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

var Item = Mn.View.extend({
  tagName: 'li',

  triggers: {
    'click a': 'select:item'
  }
});

var Collection = Mn.CollectionView.extend({
  tagName: 'ul',

  childViewEvents: {
    'select:item': 'itemSelected'
  },

  itemSelected: function(childView) {
    console.log('item selected: ' + childView.model.id);
  }
});

Event Bubbling

Events fired on a view bubble up to their direct parent views, calling any magic methods using the childview: prefix (more on that shortly) and any methods bound to the childViewEvents attribute. This works for built-in events, custom events fired with triggerMethod and bound events using triggers.

When using implicit listeners, the childview:* event prefix is used which needs to be included as part of the handler:

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

var MyView = Mn.View.extend({
  triggers: {
    click: 'click:view'
  },

  doSomething: function() {
    this.triggerMethod('did:something');
  }
});

var ParentView = Mn.View.extend({
  regions: {
    foo: '.foo-hook'
  },

  onRender: function() {
    this.showChildView('foo', new MyView());
  },

  onChildviewClickView: function(childView) {
    console.log('View clicked ' + childView);
  },

  onChildviewDidSomething: function(childView) {
    console.log('Something was done to ' + childView);
  }
})

The view gets passed into the handlers as the first argument.

Using CollectionView

This works exactly the same way for the CollectionView and its childView:

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

var MyChild = Mn.View.extend({
  triggers: {
    click: 'click:child'
  }
});

var MyList = Mn.CollectionView.extend({
  onChildviewClickChild: function(childView) {
    console.log('Childview ' + childView + ' was clicked');
  }
});

Just like with the View and its regions, the event handler will receive the view that triggered the event as its first argument.

Explicit Event Listeners

To call specific functions on event triggers, use the childViewEvents attribute to map child events to methods on the parent view. This takes events fired on child views - without the childview: prefix - and calls the method referenced or attached function.

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

var MyView = Mn.View.extend({
  triggers: {
    click: 'view:clicked'
  }
});

var ParentView = Mn.View.extend({
  regions: {
    foo: '.foo-hook'
  },

  childViewEvents: {
    'view:clicked': 'displayMessage'
  },

  onRender: function() {
    this.showChildView('foo', new MyView());
  },

  displayMessage: function(childView) {
    console.log('Displaying message for ' + childView);
  }
});

Attaching Functions

The childViewEvents attribute can also attach functions directly to be event handlers:

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

var MyView = Mn.View.extend({
  triggers: {
    click: 'view:clicked'
  }
});

var ParentView = Mn.View.extend({
  regions: {
    foo: '.foo-hook'
  },

  childViewEvents: {
    'view:clicked': function(childView) {
      console.log('Function called for ' + childView);
    }
  },

  onRender: function() {
    this.showChildView('foo', new MyView());
  }
});

Triggering Events on Child Events

Marionette 3 adds a new feature that allows selected events to fire events directly, allowing them to be propagated up the view hierarchy more easily and explicitly. The values of the hash should be a string of the event to trigger on the parent.

// The child view fires a custom event, `show:message`
var ChildView = Marionette.View.extend({

  // Events hash defines local event handlers that in turn may call `triggerMethod`.
  events: {
    'click .button': 'onClickButton'
  },

  triggers: {
    'submit form': 'submit:form'
  },

  onClickButton: function () {
    // Both `trigger` and `triggerMethod` events will be caught by parent.
    this.trigger('show:message', 'foo');
    this.triggerMethod('show:message', 'bar');
  }
});

// The parent uses childViewEvents to catch the child view's custom event
var ParentView = Marionette.CollectionView.extend({
  childView: ChildView,

  childViewTriggers: {
    'show:message': 'child:show:message',
    'submit:form': 'child:submit:form'
  },

  onChildShowMessage: function (message) {
    console.log('A child view fired show:message with ' + message);
  },

  onChildSubmitForm: function (childView) {
    console.log('A child view fired submit:form');
  }
});

var GrantParentView = Marionette.View.extend({
  regions: {
    list: '.list'
  },

  onRender: function() {
    this.showChildView('list', new ParentView({
      collection: this.collection
    }));
  },

  childViewEvents: {
    'child:submit:message': 'showMessage'
  },

  showMessage: function(childView) {
    console.log('A child (' + childView + ') fired an event');
  }
});

Lifecycle Events

Marionette Views fire events during their creation and destruction lifecycle. For more information see View Lifecycle and CollectionView Lifecycle events.

Improve this page