backbone-superapi-sync

Override Backbone.sync with superapi power, which is a lightweight configurable wrapper on top of superagent.

This (nano) library does not require itself superapi as you must provide your superapi instance. Indeed you may provide your own implementation of superapi which is ridiculously easy if you don't want superapi configuration power.

Installation

$ npm install --save-dev backbone-superapi-sync

Usage

Let's say you have a comments web service and that you use superapi to configure all your remote api calls.

// basic superapi configuration, see superapi README for help
var api = superapi.default({
  baseUrl: 'http://foo.tld/path',
  services: {
    comments: {
      path: 'foo'
    }
  },
  //
  options: {
    type: 'json'
  }
})

// attach superagent to superapi
// you could also provide your own implementation!
api.agent = superagent;

// the sync function only need to have a reference to your superapi instance
// with an optional service. If you don't provide a service you may use the options
// object to pass any headers or options to superapi.
var Comment = Backbone.Model.extend({
  sync: backboneSuperapiSync(api, 'comments'),
};

var comment = new Comment({
  title: 'My awesome comment',
  body: 'This is not a comment body',
  author: 'me'
});

comment.save();

This will make a POST call to http://foo.tld/path/foo

Not using a superapi service

Given the previous example, it's easy to not provide a service. You may only lose some superapi power, but you may have some use case where it's better to have more control, like in some dynamic context. It's as easy:

var Comment = Backbone.Model.extend({
  sync: backboneSuperapiSync(api),
};

var comment = new Comment({
  title: 'My awesome comment',
  body: 'This is not a comment body',
  author: 'me'
});

comment.save(null, {
  headers: {
    'X-FOO': 'bar'
  },
  options: {
    type: 'form'
  }
});

Overriding superapi

Yes it's possible an easy to provide your own implementation.

var req = superapi.sendRequest(httpMethod, url, data, params);

req.end(function (res) {
  (!res.error ? options.success : options.error)(res.body || {});
});

req is an instance of superagent Request so your sendRequest function only need to provide the following:

• httpMethod: any of the following HTTP word supported by superagent GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH, HEAD
• url: the url of the remote service
• data: the data to be sent with the request
• params: is a hash with headers and options in the has of superagent. You might completly ignore this last field.

Error handlers

backbone-superapi-sync provide two global error handler which are :

• Backbone.superapiSync.onError(err) called when an error is caught either in the request or in the callback (code error)
• Backbone.superapiSync.onAbort() called when a request is aborted

By default these error handlers does nothing. You must override them to match your use case.

It's as easy as :

Backbone.superapiSync.onError = function (err) {
  console.log(err);
};

The error handler will be called with either a network or a code error:

• Cross Domain Error (network error)
• Timeout (network error)
• Runtime error in callback execution (code error)

License

MIT