backbone-required-attributes is a view helper to enforce specific view constructor parameters. Its goal is to help designing Backbone.js views which do not perform complicated logic, but instead require to be initialized with certain paramaters in order to properly work.

Usage

backbone-required-attributes allows to define in an object literal notation the necessary information a Backbone.View will need in order to properly work. Ideally, the information a Backbone.View needs will be passed to it in an object literal notation in its initialize method and then validated against its expected type or instance using the requiredAttrs object literal. backbone-required-attributes internally uses underscore and if a value doesn’t comply to its expected type or instance, a console.error will be logged.

After backbone-required-attributes has been loaded, it can be used as follows:

var MyExampleView = Backbone.View.extend({

  requiredAttrs: {
    'exampleModel': Backbone.Model,
    'age': 'number',
    'title': 'string'
  }

  initialize: function(options) {
    this.validateAttrs(options)
  }

});

Available rules

• 'string': Tests if object is a String.
• 'boolean': Tests if object is either true or false.
• 'array': Tests if object is an Array.
• 'number': Tests if object is a Number (including NaN).
• If a function is provided as a rule to backbone-required-attributes, it will attempt to test if the value has in its prototype chain the prototype property of the constructor (see more). Therefore, you can also use rules such as:
  • Backbone.Router
  • Backbone.Collection
  • Backbone.Model
  • Backbone.View

Roadmap

• Log errors and warnings with specific view name.
• API to create custom rules.
• Avoid running helper on tests since it will make it difficult to test views in an isolated manner.