Backbone.js model not defined in view?

Question

I've decided that I am going to try and learn backbone.js by making a web app. This is the first time I have done anything extensive in javascript, so the answer to my problem may be right in front of my face.

I have the web app on github, along with a running version that doesn't work. The javascript console just says that something is undefined when I don't think it should be. Here's the error that chrome gives for line 30 of app.js:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'el' of undefined

I've sort of been referencing the backbone-fundamentals example modular to-do app, and it doesn't seem to have any issues with a similar thing.

If anyone could point out what I am doing wrong, I would be most appreciative!

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Your Machine view render method was missing return this and by default all methods return undefined - that's why chaining didn't work

Edit: and a small tip:

jQuery, Underscore and Backbone register globally - and thanks to that you don't have to define them as dependencies every time - it's enough if you require them in your main script once and after that you can access them from the global scope as you normally would

Answer 2

In my case i was returning this without the return keyword. As i was using javascript and not coffeescript it failed on me. So, if you are using javascript use return this; instead of just this in the last line of the render() function.

I also had a problem when using this.collection.on('reset', this.render(), this). I instead had to use this.collection.on('reset', this.render.bind(this));