backbone-connect

react-redux inspired Backbone.js/React bindings

Installation from npm

$ npm install backbone-connect

Usage

This module tries to mimic the behavior of react-redux (minus the redux store) so it might be a good idea to start with reading its documentation to gain understanding of how separating presentational and container components works.

API

<Provider />

The <Provider /> component lets you inject a Backbone Model or Collection into your component tree:

import {Provider} from 'backbone-connect';
import {SomeContainerComponent, SomeOtherContainerComponent} from './components';
import {AppModel} from './models';

const model = new AppModel();

export const TopLevelComponent = () => (
    <Provider model={model}>
        <SomeContainerComponent />
        <SomeOtherContainerComponent />
    </Provider>
);

It is important to note that no matter if you pass a Backbone Collection or a Backbone Model to the Provider you will always need to attach it to the model prop.

connect(mapModelToProps, ...renderEvents)

connect lets you define the relationship between the Model in your components' context and its props by passing a mapModelToProps function:

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import {Model} from 'backbone';
import {connect, Provider} from 'backbone-connect';

const Presenter = ({
    counter
    , handleClick
}) => (
    <div>
        <p>{counter}</p>
        <button onClick={handleClick}>Increase</button>
    </div>
);

const mapModelToProps = (json, model) => ({
    counter: json.counter
    , handleClick(){
        model.set('counter', json.counter);
    }
});

const ContainerComponent = connect(mapModelToProps)(Presenter);
const model = new Model({counter: 1});

const ParentComponent = () => (
    <Provider model={model}>
        <ContainerComponent />
    </Provider>
);

ReactDOM.render(<ParentComponent />, document.querySelector('#host'));

mapModelToProps receives following arguments:

1. toJSON() version of the Model
2. the Model/Collection itself
3. the container component's own props

const mapModelToProps = (json, model, ownProps) => ({
    headline: ownProps.headline
    , counter: json.counter
    , increaseCounter(){
        model.set('counter', json.counter + 1);
    }
});

By default connect listens to change events for a Model or change update for a Collection. In case you need different behavior you can pass an arbitrary list of event names when calling the function. Each of these events will then trigger a re-evaluation:

const ContainerComponent = connect(mapModelToProps, 'sync', 'remove', 'customevent')(Presenter);

License

MIT © Frederik Ring