Backbone Relational - Deep nested models/collections

Question

Having some fun with Backbone-relational.js v0.10.0

I have a JSON object which contains nested models and collections, to keep this simple I have made the example below. A company can have many employees, employees can have one address and many tasks.

{
    name: 'Nicks Company',
    employees: [{
        name: 'Bob',
        address: {
            line1: '1 City Lane',
            city: 'London'
        },
        tasks: [{
            description: 'Make this work'
        }]
    }, {
        name: 'Bill',
        address: {
            line1: '1 The Street',
            city: 'Birmingham'
        },
        tasks: [{
            description: 'Make a cake'
        }, {
            description: 'Fix all the things'
        }]
    }]
}

In the below JSFiddle (console) you can see that the address is a plain object, also the commented out code for tasks has been disabled as tasks is returned as an array.

JSFiddle: https://jsfiddle.net/nwa29uLv/2/

Neither the address model or the collection of tasks are created as Backbone instances, is this possible or am I pushing the limits of this plugin?

Answer 1

• Here is how I resolved the issue. You were missing the reverseRelation.
• BTW did you look at this post? It has a similar issue.

Follow the fiddle here

var Address = Backbone.RelationalModel.extend({});

var Task = Backbone.RelationalModel.extend({});
var TaskCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
  model: Task
});

var Employee = Backbone.RelationalModel.extend({
  relations: [{
    type: Backbone.HasOne,
    key: 'address',
    relatedModel: Address,
    reverseRelation: {
      type: Backbone.HasOne,
      key: 'employee'
    }
  }, {
    type: Backbone.HasMany,
    key: 'tasks',
    collectionType: TaskCollection,
    relatedModel: Task,
    reverseRelation: {
      type: Backbone.HasOne,
      key: 'operatesOn'
    }
  }]
});

var EmployeeCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
  model: Employee
});

var Company = Backbone.RelationalModel.extend({
  relations: [{
    type: Backbone.HasMany,
    key: 'employees',
    relatedModel: Employee,
    reverseRelation: {
      key: 'worksFor'
    }
  }]
});

var company = new Company({
  name: 'Nicks Company',
  employees: [{
    name: 'Bob',
    address: {
      line1: '1 City Lane',
      city: 'London'
    },
    tasks: [{
      description: 'Make this work'
    }]
  }, {
    name: 'Bill',
    address: {
      line1: '1 The Street',
      city: 'Birmingham'
    },
    tasks: [{
      description: 'Make a cake'
    }, {
      description: 'Fix all the things'
    }]
  }]
});

console.log('Company:', company.get('name'));
company.get('employees').each(function(employee) {
  console.log('Employee:', employee.get('name'));
  console.log('Employee:', employee.get('name'), 'Address Model:', employee.get('address').get('city'));
  employee.get('tasks').each(function(task) {
    console.log('Employee:', employee.get('name'), 'Task: ', task.get('description'));
  });
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.8.3/underscore-min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/backbone.js/1.3.3/backbone-min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/backbone-relational/0.10.0/backbone-relational.js"></script>