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The DOM API

With the release of Marionette 3.2, developers can remove the dependency on jQuery and integrate with the DOM using a custom api.

API Methods

The DOM API manages the DOM on behalf of each view class and Region. It defines the methods that actually attach and remove views and children.

The default API depends on Backbone's jQuery $ object however it does not rely on jQuery-specific behavior. This should make it easier to develop your own API. You will, however, need to also handle Backbone's jQuery integration.

createBuffer()

Returns a new HTML DOM node instance. The resulting node can be passed into the other DOM functions.

getEl(selector)

Lookup the selector string withing the DOM. The selector may also be a DOM element. It should return an array-like object of the node.

findEl(el, selector)

Lookup the selector string within the DOM node el. It should return an array-like object of nodes.

hasEl(el, childEl)

Returns true if the el contains the node childEl

detachEl(el)

Detach el from the DOM without removing listeners.

replaceEl(newEl, oldEl)

Remove oldEl from the DOM and put newEl in its place.

swapEl(el1, el2)

Swaps the location of el1 and el2 in the DOM. Both els must have a parentNode to be able to swap.

setContents(el, html)

Replace the contents of el with the HTML string of html. Unlike other DOM functions, this only takes a literal string for its second argument.

appendContents(el, contents)

Takes the DOM node el and appends the DOM node contents to the end of the element's contents.

hasContents(el)

Returns a boolean indicating if the el has child nodes.

detachContents(el)

Remove the inner contents of el from the DOM while leaving el itself in the DOM.

The default API

The API used by Marionette by default is attached as Marionette.DomApi. This is useful if you change the API globally, but want to reuse the default in certain cases.

import { setDomApi, DomApi } from 'backbone.marionette';

import MyDOMApi from './mydom';

setDomApi(MyDOMApi);

// Use MyDOMApi everywhere but `Marionette.View`
View.setDomApi(DomApi);

Providing Your Own DOM API

To implement your own DOM API use setDomApi:

import { setDomApi } from 'backbone.marionette';
import MyDOMApi from './mydom';

setDomApi(MyDOMApi);

You can also implement a different DOM API for a particular class:

import { View } from 'backbone.marionette';

View.setDomApi(MyDOMApi);

CollectionView, Region, and View all have setDomApi. Each extended class may have their own DOM API.

Additionally a DOM API can be partially set:

import { View } from 'backbone.marionette';

const MyView = View.extend();

MyView.setDomApi({
  setContents(el, html) {
    el.innerHTML = html;
  }
});

Backbone jQuery Integration

Backbone.js is tied to jQuery's API for managing DOM manipulation. If you want to completely remove jQuery from your Marionette app, you'll also have to provide your own versions of the following methods:

See Also

The DOM API takes care of the other DOM manipulation methods for you. The Backbone Wiki has a good reference for removing jQuery from the app, including Browserify and Webpack configuration hooks.

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