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Backbone.Memento

Memento push and pop for Backbone.js models and collections structures.

A view may offer some editing capabilities that directly modify a structure (model or collection), directly. If you want to cancel the changes after they have already been applied to the structure, you will have to make a round trip to the back-end server or other origin of the structures's data to do so.

With the memento pattern and the Backbone.Memento plugin, you do not need to make any round trips.

Getting Started

It's easy to get up and running. You only need to have Backbone (including underscore.js - a requirement for Backbone) in your page before including the backbone.memento plugin.

Prerequisites

  • Backbone.js v0.5.3, v0.9.0, or higher

This plugin is built and tested against Backbone v0.9.0 but should run against most versions of Backbone, as it only uses functionality built into the Backbone structures. Namely, it uses the set and unset methods of models and reset and remove of collections.

Get The Memento Plugin

Download the backbone.memento.js file from this github repository and copy it into your javascripts folder. Add the needed <script> tag to bring the plugin into any page that wishes to use it. Be sure to include the modelbinding file after the backbone.js file.

Setup A Model/Collection For Mementoing

Your models must make use of the Backbone.Memento object, directly. This can easily be done in multiple ways

Extend The Memento

You can tell a model instance to extend a memento instance. This will provide all of the memento methods directly on the model.

SomeModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
  initialize: function(){
    var memento = new Backbone.Memento(this);
    _.extend(this, memento);
  }
});

Cherry-Picking Methods

You can also configure a model by instantiating the memento with your model's initializer and then providing access to the methods as needed, or by using the methods internally.

SomeModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
  initialize: function(){
    this.memento = new Backbone.Memento(this);
    this.restart = this.memento.restart;
  },

  someAppMethod: function(){
    this.memento.set();
  },

  moreAppMethod: function(){
    this.memento.store();
    // ... do stuff here

    // ... then restart it if needed
    this.memento.restore();
  }
});

This gives you more control over where the memento methods can be used.

Memento with Collections

Memento has been recently upgraded to support collections and saving state of the models under the hood. This will greatly assist with filtering collections temporarily.

Note the use of reset intead of set.

SomeCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
  initialize: function() {
    _.extend(this, new Backbone.Memento(this));
  }
});

var someCollection = new SomeCollection();
someCollection.reset({something: "whatever"});
someCollection.store();
someCollection.reset({something: "a change"});
someCollection.restore();

someCollection.at(0).get("something"); //=> "whatever"

Memento Methods

There are several methods provided by Backbone.Memento, to allow you more control over how the memento object works, and when.

memento.store

This method creates a copy of your structure's current state, as a memento, and stores it in a stack (first in, last out).

memento.restore

This method takes the previously stored state, and restores your structure to this state. You can call this as many times as you have called store. Calling this method more times than you have called store will result in a no-operation and your structure will not be changed.

memento.restart (formerly reset)

This method effectively rolls your structure back to the first store point, no matter how many times it has been stored in the memento.

(reset was deprecated since it has a naming conflict with Backbone.Collections.prototype.reset.)

Configuration

There is only one item of configuration for Backbone.Memento at the moment:

Ignore Model Attributes

There are some scenarios where it may cause issues to have all attributes restored from a previous state, for a model. In this case, you can ignore specific attributes for the model.

Ignore For The Model Instance

You can configure the memento to ignore the attributes when instantiating the memento:

SomeModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
  initialize: function(){
    _.extend(this, new Backbone.Memento(this, {
      ignore: ["something", "another", "whatever", "..."]
    });
  },

  // ...
});

var someModel = new SomeModel();
someModel.set({something: "whatever"});
someModel.store();
someModel.set({something: "a change"});
someModel.restore();

someModel.get("something"); //=> "a change"

Ignore For This Restore Only

Alternatively, you can override the pre-configured ignored attributes by passing an ignore array into the restore method:

SomeModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
  initialize: function(){
    this.memento = new Backbone.Memento(this);
  },

  // ...
});

var someModel = new SomeModel();
someModel.set({something: "whatever"});
someModel.store();
someModel.set({something: "a change"});
someModel.restore({ignore: ["something"]});

someModel.get("something"); //=> "a change"

Note that passing an ignore array into the restore method will override the pre-configured ignore list.

Examples

With this in place, you can push your model's state onto the memento stack by calling store, and pop the previously stored state back into the model (destroying the current state in the process) by calling restore.

myModel = new SomeModel();
myModel.set({foo: "bar"});

myModel.store();

myModel.set({foo: "a change"});

myModel.restore();

myModel.get("foo"); // => "bar"

Set And Unset Attributes

Backbone.Memento will set and unset attributes, when poping from the memento stack. For example, if you add an attribute after storing your models state, and then later restore back to the previous state, the attribute that you added will be unset. The unset attribute will have it's change event fired, as well.

myModel = new SomeModel();
myModel.set({foo: "stuff"});

myModel.store();

myModel.set({bar: "a new attribute"});

myModel.bind("change:bar", function(model, value){
  alert('bar was changed to: ' + val);
}

myModel.restore(); // => causes an alert box to say "bar was changed to undefined"

myModel.get("bar"); // => undefined, as the attribute does not exist

Release Notes

v0.4.1a

  • No code changes were made. This release is for library upgrades only, for testing purposes
    • Updated Backbone to v0.9.0
    • Updated Underscore to v1.3.1
    • Updated jQuery to v1.7.1

v0.4.1

  • Fixed global scope leak for a variable

v0.4.0

v0.3.0

  • changed the public memento API to support collections
  • updated documentation to reflect changes

v0.2.0

  • changed the public memento API and how a model is connected to the memento
  • changed the name of the 'clear' method to 'restart', to prevent hijacking the model's clear method
  • updated the documentation to include better examples and more detail

v0.1.4

  • ability to ignore model attributes - they won't be stored or restored

v0.1.3

  • Fixed a small bug with rolling back more times than had been saved

v0.1.2

  • Added ability to restart a model, moving back to the beginning of the memento stack
  • Fixed a few bugs in the removing of old attributes, related to global variables, etc
  • Code cleanup and switching to a standard object constructor function instead of return an object literal

v0.1 and v0.1.1

  • Initial releases with a few minor bug fixes

Legal Mumbo Jumbo (MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2011 Derick Bailey, Muted Solutions, LLC

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.