Chapter 1, Understanding Backbone, introduces you to an MVC pattern and Backbone.js framework. You will learn how to design Backbone applications in terms of MVC and will be able to create your first Backbone app using models, views, and routers.

Chapter 2, Models, helps you learn about Backbone.Model, the main building block of your application, which stores data and provides business logic.

Chapter 3, Collections, teaches you how to organize models in manageable sets known as collections, which allow you to perform different methods, such as sorting, filtering, iterating, and so on.

Chapter 4, Views, helps you learn how to use Backbone views to render models and collections, and how to intercept DOM events.

Chapter 5, Events and Bindings, tells you about event system used in Backbone.js and demonstrates event binding techniques.

Chapter 6, Templates and UX sugar, is devoted to the frontend enhancements that makes Backbone application look better and program easily.

Chapter 7, REST and Storage, is focused on how Backbone.js synchronizes models and collections with a RESTful backend or stores them in the HTML5 local storage.

Chapter 8, Special Techniques, helps you learn how to solve the most challenging problems that can occur during Backbone development, such as creating extensions, testing your app, creating a mobile app, and performing search-engine compatibility.

Most of the recipes in this book do not require special software to be used. What you need is a browser and a text editor or IDE to edit HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files. Some of the recipes in Chapter 7, Rest and Storage and Chapter 8, Special Techniques require you to install GIT, Node.js, and NPM. It also assumes that you can use a Unix-like shell.

This book is created for frontend developers who are familiar with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It assumes that you have good understanding of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) and some practice with the jQuery library.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "To check if model has an attribute use the has() method. It returns true if the attribute exists, otherwise false."

A block of code is set as follows:

if (!invoiceItemModel.has('quantity'))
  {
    console.log('Quantity attribute does not exists!')
  }

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

var InvoiceItemModel = Backbone.Model.extend
  ({
    // Define validation criteria.
    validate: function(attrs) {
      if (attrs.quantity <= 0) {
         return "quantity can't be negative or equal to zero";
      }
    }
  });

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ npm install -g requirejs

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus, or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "When user clicks on the Add button, the following popup is generated and shown to the user:".

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