Backbone.Handlebars

Backbone.Handlebars provides a solid integration of Handlebars into Backbone with:

• Support for Backbone.Model: {{user.name}} compiles to user.get('name')
• Support for Backbone.Collection: the each helper is able to iterate through a Backbone.Collection.
• Nested views: <h1>User details</h1>{{view UserView model=user}}
• HandlebarsView: an extended Backbone.View that automate the rendering of your empowered Handlebars templates.

You can refer to the project's website for a nice HTML documentation.

Download

The raw sources can be navigated on GitHub. The distributed sources can be found in the dist/ directory or downloaded directly via one of the following links:

• Production minified version: backbone.handlebars.min.js (v0.2.1).
• Development version: backbone.handlebars.js (v0.2.1).

You can also use Bower to install backbone.handlebars:

$ bower install backbone.handlebars --save

Support for Backbone.Model

Backbone.Handlebars extends Handlebars to support fetching Backbone.Model attributes through model.get(attribute):

var user = new Backbone.Model({name: 'World'});
var fn = Handlebars.compile('Hello {{name}}!');
fn(user);
// Hello World!

Notice that we directly pass the user as context and not user.toJSON(). Instead of using the dot notation user.name, it will detect that we are managing a Backbone.Model and use user.get('name').

Support for Backbone.Collection

Backbone.Handlebars override the default each helper to support looping through a Backbone.Collection:

var numbers = new Backbone.Collection(['one', 'two', 'three', 'four']);
var fn = Handlebars.compile('<ul>{{#each numbers}}<li>{{number}}</li>{{/each}}</ul>');
fn({numbers: numbers});
// <ul><li>one</li><li>two</li><li>three</li><li>four</li></ul>

HandlebarsView and Nested Views

var User = Backbone.Model.extend();

var AppView = Backbone.HandlebarsView.extend({
  template: '<h1>Hello</h1>{{view "HelloView" model=this}}'
});

var HelloView = Backbone.HandlebarsView.extend({
  template: 'Hello {{name}}'
});

var app = new AppView({model: new User({name: 'Loïc'})});
app.render().$el.appendTo('#app');

Tests

Backbone.Handlebars is tested, you can see its test suite running online. Also, Travis CI takes care of continuously running this test suite: .

Changelog

0.2.1

• Update Bower dependencies.

0.2.0

• Internal refactoring of nested views management.
• Support path notation for nested views lookup: {{view "My.Deep.View"}}.

0.1.0

• Initial backbone.handlebars release.

License

Copyright (c) 2013 Loïc Frering, licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more informations.