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Marionette.CompositeView

A CompositeView extends from CollectionView to be used as a composite view for scenarios where it should represent both a branch and leaf in a tree structure, or for scenarios where a collection needs to be rendered within a wrapper template.

Please see the Marionette.CollectionView documentation for more information on available features and functionality.

Additionally, interactions with Marionette.Region will provide features such as onShow callbacks, etc. Please see the Region documentation for more information.

Example Usage: Tree View

For example, if you're rendering a treeview control, you may want to render a collection view with a model and template so that it will show a parent item with children in the tree.

You can specify a modelView to use for the model. If you don't specify one, it will default to the Marionette.ItemView.

CompositeView = Backbone.Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
  template: "#leaf-branch-template"
});

new CompositeView({
  model: someModel,
  collection: someCollection
});

For more examples, see my blog post on using the composite view.

Documentation Index

Composite Model template

When a CompositeView is rendered, the model will be rendered with the template that the view is configured with. You can override the template by passing it in as a constructor option:

new MyComp({
  template: "#some-template"
});

CompositeView's itemViewContainer

By default the composite view uses the same appendHtml method that the collection view provides. This means the view will call jQuery's .append to move the HTML contents from the item view instance in to the collection view's el.

This is typically not very useful as a composite view will usually render a container DOM element in which the item views should be placed.

For example, if you are building a table view, and want to append each item from the collection in to the <tbody> of the table, you might do this with a template:

<script id="row-template" type="text/html">
  <td><%= someData %></td>
  <td><%= moreData %></td>
  <td><%= stuff %></td>
</script>

<script id="table-template" type="text/html">
  <table>
    <thead>
      <tr>
        <th>Some Column</th>
        <th>Another Column</th>
        <th>Still More</th>
      </tr>
    </thead>

    <!-- want to insert collection items, here -->
    <tbody></tbody>

    <tfoot>
      <tr>
        <td colspan="3">some footer information</td>
      </tr>
    </tfoot>
  </table>
</script>

To get your itemView instances to render within the <tbody> of this table structure, specify an itemViewContainer in your composite view, like this:

RowView = Backbone.Marionette.ItemView.extend({
  tagName: "tr",
  template: "#row-template"
});

TableView = Backbone.Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
  itemView: RowView,

  // specify a jQuery selector to put the itemView instances in to
  itemViewContainer: "tbody",

  template: "#table-template"
});

This will put all of the itemView instances in to the <tbody> tag of the composite view's rendered template, correctly producing the table structure.

Alternatively, you can specify a function as the itemViewContainer. This function needs to return a jQuery selector string, or a jQuery selector object.

var TableView = Backbone.Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
  // ...

  itemViewContainer: function(){
    return "#tbody"
  }
});

Using a function allows for logic to be used for the selector. However, only one value can be returned. Upon returning the first value, it will be cached and that value will be used for the remainder of that view instance' lifecycle.

Alternatively, the itemViewContainer can be supplied in the constructor function options:

var myComp = new Marionette.CompositeView({
  // ...,

  itemViewContainer: "#tbody"
});

CompositeView's appendHtml

Sometimes the itemViewContainer configuration is insuficient for specifying where the itemView instance should be placed. If this is the case, you can override the appendHtml method with your own implementation.

For example:

TableView = Backbone.Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
  itemView: RowView,

  template: "#table-template",

  appendHtml: function(collectionView, itemView, index){
    collectionView.$("tbody").append(itemView.el);
  }
});

For more information on the parameters of this method, see the CollectionView's documentation.

Recursive By Default

The default rendering mode for a CompositeView assumes a hierarchical, recursive structure. If you configure a composite view without specifying an itemView, you'll get the same composite view type rendered for each item in the collection. If you need to override this, you can specify a itemView in the composite view's definition:

var ItemView = Backbone.Marionette.ItemView.extend({});

var CompView = Backbone.Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
  itemView: ItemView
});

Model And Collection Rendering

The model and collection for the composite view will re-render themselves under the following conditions:

  • When the collection's "reset" event is fired, it will only re-render the collection within the composite, and not the wrapper template
  • When the collection has a model added to it (the "add" event is fired), it will render that one item to the rendered list
  • When the collection has a model removed (the "remove" event is fired), it will remove that one item from the rendered list

You can also manually re-render either or both of them:

  • If you want to re-render everything, call the .render() method
  • If you want to re-render the model's view, you can call .renderModel()

Events And Callbacks

During the course of rendering a composite, several events will be triggered. These events are triggered with the Marionette.triggerMethod function, which calls a corresponding "on{EventName}" method on the view.

  • "composite:model:rendered" / onCompositeModelRendered - after the modelView has been rendered
  • "composite:collection:rendered" / onCompositeCollectionRendered - after the collection of models has been rendered
  • "render" / onRender and "composite:rendered" / onCompositeRendered - after everything has been rendered

Additionally, after the composite view has been rendered, an onRender method will be called. You can implement this in your view to provide custom code for dealing with the view's el after it has been rendered:

Backbone.Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
  onRender: function(){
    // do stuff here
  }
});

Organizing UI elements

Similar to ItemView, you can organize the UI elements inside the CompositeView by specifying them in the UI hash. It should be noted that the elements that can be accessed via this hash are the elements that are directly rendered by the composite view template, not those belonging to the collection.

The UI elements will be accessible as soon as the composite view template is rendered (and before the collection is rendered), which means you can even access them in the onBeforeRender method.

modelEvents and collectionEvents

CompositeViews can bind directly to model events and collection events in a declarative manner:

Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
  modelEvents: {
    "change": "modelChanged"
  },

  collectionEvents: {
    "add": "modelAdded"
  }
});

For more information, see the Marionette.View documentation.