Structuring Backbone Code with RequireJS and Marionette Modules

Structuring Backbone Code with RequireJS and Marionette Modules

English | 2014 | 118 Pages | PDF, EPUB, MOBI | 10 MB

Due to popular demand from my well-received previous book on Marionette (Backbone.Marionette.js: A Gentle Introduction), I’ve taken the Contact Manager application developed in that book and rebuilt it using RequireJS to load dependencies. It has great feedback so far, and I hope you’ll like it, too!
Who This Book is For
Essentially, this book is written as a sequel of sorts to my first book. If you want to learn about using RequireJS and AMD (Asynchronous Module Definition) to use in your own applications, you should be fine following along provided you’re comfortable with Marionette and its modules, as well as the Contact Manager application (see its source code). In other words, this book does not cover how to develop a Marionette application, only how to use RequireJS to manage dependencies and optimization/minification. If you want to learn how to create a Marionette application, refer to my Backbone.Marionette.js: A Gentle Introduction book.
What You’ll Learn
Rebuilding the existing Contact Manager application, but using RequireJS to load all dependencies (other modules, libraries, templates, etc.). Common errors and their likely cause will be discussed, so you can debug your own projects more easily. Running the r.js optimizer to generate a single, minified js file will be demonstrated. In addition, you will actually understand and learn how to “think AMD” and how to apply that mindset to your own projects.
Starting/stopping sub-applications to improve performance will be demonstrated, as well as loading libraries from a CDN, with a local fallback.
Although this book is focused on using RequireJS with Backbone and Marionette, once you’re done with it you should be able to use RequireJS in other projects. This is because the book emphasizes the logic behind the implementation, and once you’ve understood how to use shims and load dependencies, applying this knowledge to your own projects should be straightforward.