Backbone.NativeView

A drop-in replacement for Backbone.View that uses only native DOM methods for element selection and event delegation. It has no dependency on jQuery.

NOTE: Backbone.NativeView relies on version 1.2.0 of Backbone. Backbone 1.1.2 is not compatible with Backbone.NativeView.

To Use:

Load Backbone.NativeView with your favorite module loader or add as a script tag after you have loaded Backbone in the page. Wherever you had previously inherited from Backbone.View, you will now inherit from Backbone.NativeView.

var MyView = Backbone.NativeView.extend({
  initialize: function(options) {
    // ...
  }
});

As an alternative, you may extend an existing View's prototype to use native methods, or even replace Backbone.View itself:

var MyBaseView = Backbone.View.extend(Backbone.NativeViewMixin);

or

var MyBaseView = Backbone.View.extend({
  initialize: function(options) {
    // If you go the prototype extension route be sure to set _domEvents in
    // initialize yourself.
    this._domEvents = [];
  }
});

_.extend(MyBaseView.prototype, Backbone.NativeViewMixin);

or

Backbone.View = Backbone.NativeView;

var MyView = Backbone.View.extend({
  initialize: function(options) {
    // ...
  }
});

Features:

Delegation:

var view = new MyView({el: '#my-element'});
view.delegate('click', view.clickHandler);

Undelegation with event names or listeners,

view.undelegate('click', view.clickHandler);
view.undelegate('click');

View-scoped element finding:

// for one matched element
_.first(view.$('.box')).focus();

// for multiple matched elements
_.each(view.$('.item'), function(el) {
  el.classList.remove('active')
});
var fields = _.pluck(view.$('.field'), 'innerHTML');

Requirements:

NativeView makes use of querySelector and querySelectorAll. For IE7 and below you must include a polyfill.

Notes:

• The $el property no longer exists on Views. Use el instead.
• View#$ returns a NodeList instead of a jQuery context. You can iterate over either using _.each.

With many thanks to @wyuenho for his initial code.