anthonybrown / hands-on-backbone

The sample code to go along with the "Hands-on Backbone.js" screencast series from PragProg.com

Hands-On Backbone.js

This is the code that goes along with the 4-part screencast series that I released through the Pragmatic Programmers.

The series is available for purchase at:

http://pragprog.com/screencasts/v-dback/hands-on-backbone-js

Running The Sample Code

This sample application is built with Ruby and the Sinatra framework as the back-end / web server. Backbone itself does not care what the back-end server is built with. I chose Ruby and Sinatra because of their simplicity and ubiquity across platforms.

To install and run this code, you need a ruby installation on your computer. You can obtain an appropriate version at http://ruby-lang.org

Once you have that installed, you will also need the RubyGems system (typically included with the ruby runtime), available from http://rubygems.org

To install Sinatra and all of the other gems necessary to run the sample code, install the bundler gem, then use bundler to install the remaining gems:

gem install bundler

bundle install

The bundle install command must be run from a folder that contains a Gemfile.

To run the application, open the folder that you wish to run from, and run ruby app.rb from a command prompt. This will start the sinatra web server. Open your browser to http://localhost:4567 and you're ready to go.

About The Series

Backbone.js is a hot topic these days, and with good reason. It powers some of the web’s most well-known applications including the LinkedIn mobile app, the Wal-Mart mobile app, rdio’s music player for both the web and their desktop clients, the Disqus commenting widget and much, much more. This little library of simple abstractions has helped to create a new generation of interactive and rich applications for the web, and it’s time for you to learn it.

With a nearly endless stream of success stories, blog posts, add-ons and frameworks built on top of Backbone.js, you don’t need another set of marketing materials to tell you why you should be working with Backbone.js. What you need is a way to get started quickly – to get up to speed with Backbone’s components, learning how to orchestrate them to create rich, interactive applications in a browser. This series of screencasts from Backbone.js expert Derick Bailey, will teach you what you need to know in a straight-to-the-point, hands-on way to building single page applications for today’s modern web.

But this isn’t marketing material to try and sell you on why you should use Backbone instead of Ember, Angular, Batman (yes, there’s a JavaScript MVC framework called Batman) or anything else. This is a hands-on, down and dirty, straight-to-the point walkthrough of all of the core components of Backbone. It will show you the fundamentals of creating single page applications in one of today’s most powerful JavaScript libraries. It will get you up to speed on how to use all of the components of Backbone, alongside your own JavaScript code, to create a rich and interactive image gallery application. And it will show you many of the common pitfalls and errors that you’ll run into, and how to avoid and correct for those problems.

In this 4 part screencast series, Backbone.js expert Derick Bailey will walk you through a hands-on introduction to building an image gallery application with Backbone, from the ground up. You’ll learn how to take an existing HTML form and jQuery code base, and migrate that into a Backbone view. You’ll use models and collections to store the image information entered into the form, and display a list of images to choose from and view. You’ll build an image viewer from a list, and see how to take advantage of the browser’s forward and back buttons with routers. Server persistence of image data will let the application reload from where the user left off, and common error scenarios will be handled.

License And Copyright

Copyrights apply to this source code. You may use the source code in your own projects, however the source code may not be used to create training material, courses, books, articles, and the like. We make no guarantees that this source code is fit for any purpose.

Copyright ©2012 The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC. All Rights Reserved.