Developing Backbone.js Applications: Building Better JavaScript Applications

By Addy Osmani

If you want to build your site’s frontend with the single-page application (SPA) model, this hands-on book shows you how to get the job done with Backbone.js. You’ll learn how to create structured JavaScript applications, using Backbone’s own flavor of model-view-controller (MVC) architecture.

Start with the basics of MVC, SPA, and Backbone, then get your hands dirty building sample applications—a simple Todo list app, a RESTful book library app, and a modular app with Backbone and RequireJS. Author Addy Osmani, an engineer for Google’s Chrome team, also demonstrates advanced uses of the framework.

• Learn how Backbone.js brings MVC benefits to the client-side
• Write code that can be easily read, structured, and extended
• Work with the Backbone.Marionette and Thorax extension frameworks
• Solve common problems you’ll encounter when using Backbone.js
• Organize your code into modules with AMD and RequireJS
• Paginate data for your Collections with the Backbone.Paginator plugin
• Bootstrap a new Backbone.js application with boilerplate code
• Use Backbone with jQuery Mobile and resolve routing problems between the two
• Unit-test your Backbone apps with Jasmine, QUnit, and SinonJS

• Language: English
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
• Release date: May 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449328566

Addy Osmani

Addy Osmani is an Engineering Leader working on Google Chrome. He leads Chrome's Developer Experience teams, helping to keep the web fast and delightful to build. Addy has authored several open-source projects as well as a number of books including Learning Patterns, Learning JavaScript Design Patterns, and Image Optimization. His personal blog is addyosmani.com.

Reviews for Developing Backbone.js Applications

[steve6clason · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first half of the book was very good. Osmani introduces the reader to the theory behind Backbone.js, then carefull walks through the development of a simple “To Do” application, providing code (error-free!) and discussion of how newly-introduced code parts integrate with what we've already done and what they mean in the Backbone.js environment.After two courses through the increasingly complex demo application, the book went beyond my level of interest, introducing extensions like Marionette and then covering modularization using Require.js. No doubt those latter parts were as carefully written and reviewed as the first parts, so developers with a deeper interest in the framework shouldn't take my lack of interest as any sort of criticism.Osmani comes across as good-natured and certainly knows the material. The code samples work, explanations are thorough without any sort of condescension, and the content is well-organized. A developer with some JavaScript experience can pick things up typing through the code samples – I completed my first (small, but non-trivial) Backbone application with little trouble immediately after completing Osmani's first two demos.I did notice in my first solo project that I had little idea how to implement the “model” part of the MV* (as he calls it) framework. Looking back, I saw that the total utilization of that part of the framework in Osman's first demos totaled a dozen lines of code, mostly setting some defaults. I see that as a shortcoming of the book and is the reason for 4 rather than 5 stars.