What's the difference between:
$(this.el).html
and
this.$el.html
Reading a few backbone examples and some do it one way and other another way.
What's the difference between:
$(this.el).html
and
this.$el.html
Reading a few backbone examples and some do it one way and other another way.
$(this.el)
wraps an element with jQuery (or Zepto). So, if your view HTML was this:
<div id="myViewElement"></div>
...and this.el
referenced that div, then $(this.el)
would be the equivalent of retrieving it directly via jQuery: $('#myViewElement')
.
this.$el
is a cached reference to the jQuery (or Zepto) object, so a copy of what you would get from calling $(this.el)
. The intent is to save you the need to call $(this.el)
, which may have some overhead and therefor performance concerns.
Please note: the two are NOT equivalent. this.el
alone is a reference to a host object HTMLElement -- no libraries involved. This is the return of document.getElementById
. $(this.el)
creates a new instance of the jQuery/Zepto object. this.$el
references a single instance of the former object. It is not "wrong" to use any of them, as long as you understand the costs of multiple calls to $(this.el)
.
In code:
this.ele = document.getElementById('myViewElement');
this.$ele = $('#myViewElement');
$('#myViewElement') == $(this.ele);
Also, it is worth mentioning that jQuery and Zepto have partial internal caches, so extra calls to $(this.el)
might end up returning a cached result anyway, and that's why I say "may have performance concerns". It also may not.
Documentation
view.$el
- http://backbonejs.org/#View-$el$
in backbone - http://backbonejs.org/#View-dollarThe two are essentially* equivalent, with $el
being a cached version of the jQuery or Zepto objects el
, the reason why you see examples using $(this.el)
is because it was only added in a later release of backbone.js (0.9.0).
*Technically as Chris Baker points out $(this.el)
will (probably) create a new jQuery/Zepto object each time you call it while this.$el
will reference the same one each time.
If $el
exists on this
and is a jQuery object, you shouldn't use $(this.el)
because it would be initializing a new jQuery object when one already exists.
They yield exactly the same thing; that is, a reference to a view's element. $el is simply a jquery wrapper for $(this.el). Look at this reference: http://documentcloud.github.com/backbone/#View-$el
I usually see this:
var markup = $(this).html();
$(this).html('<strong>whoo hoo</strong>');
I agree with Raminon. Your examples you've seen look wrong.
This code is typically seen within a jquery loop, such as each(), or an event handler. Inside the loop, the 'el' variable will point to the pure element, not a jQuery object. The same holds true for 'this' inside an event handler.
When you see the following: $(el) or $(this), the author is getting a jQuery reference to the dom object.
Here's an example I just used to convert numbers to roman numerials: (Note, I always use jQuery instead of $ -- too many collisions with mootools...)
jQuery(document).ready(function(){
jQuery('.rom_num').each(function(idx,el){
var span = jQuery(el);
span.html(toRoman(span.text()));
});
});
Wrapping an element in $() appends the jQuery extensions to the object prototype. Once that's done it doesn't need to be done again, although there's no harm other than performance in doing it multiple times.