Backbone collection from external JSON file not rendering

Question

Rookie question, but i've been stumped for 23 days now. Below is my code to display a list of items from an external array. My collection is not rendering, I can see the items in the collection when running 'stations' in the console.

window.App = {
    Views: {},
    Models: {},
    Collections: {}
}

window.template = function(id){
    return _.template( $('#' + id).html() );
};


App.Models.Station = Backbone.Model.extend({
    defaults: {
        name: 'Station',
        bikes: 20
    }
});

App.Collections.Stations = Backbone.Collection.extend({
    model: App.Models.Station,
    url: 'http://api.citybik.es/dublinbikes.json',
    parse : function(response){
    return response;  
    }
});

App.Views.Station = Backbone.View.extend({
    tagName: 'li',

    initialize: function(){
        this.render();
    },

    render: function(){
        this.$el.html( this.model.get('name') + ': ' + this.model.get('bikes') + ' bikes available');
        return this;
    }
});

App.Views.Stations = Backbone.View.extend({
    tagName: 'ul',

    initialize: function(){
        this.render();
    },

    render: function(){
        this.collection.each(this.addOne, this);
    },

    addOne: function(station){
        var stationView = new App.Views.Station({ model: station });
        this.$el.append(stationView.render().el);
    }
}); 

var stations = new App.Collections.Stations();
stations.fetch();

var stationsView = new App.Views.Stations({ collection: stations });
$('body').prepend(stationsView.$el);

Answer 1

I think jack is right - something like this may work for you:

var stations = new App.Collections.Stations();
stations.fetch({success: function(){
  var stationsView = new App.Views.Stations({ collection: stations });
  $('body').prepend(stationsView.$el);
}});

Or using the deferred API for the jqxhr object returned from fetch:

var stations = new App.Collections.Stations();
var stationsLoaded = stations.fetch();

stationsLoaded.done(function(){
  var stationsView = new App.Views.Stations({ collection: stations });
  $('body').prepend(stationsView.$el);
});