How do I fetch a backbone.js model from serialized

Question

If I had a model like this in my MVC3 application:

public class Person
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public Name Name { get; set; }
    public Address Address { get; set; }
    public PhoneNumber PhoneNumber { get; set; }
}

public class Name
{
    public string First { get; set; }
    public string Last { get; set; }
}

public class Address
{
    public string AddressLine { get; set; }
    public string City { get; set; }
    public string State { get; set; }
    public string Zip { get; set; }
}

How would do I populate it with .fetch() from backbone.js?

This is what I tried:

class Person extends Backbone.Model

$ ->
    person = new Person()
    person.fetch()

    // person.get for things like Name.First, or Name, or First
    // all return undefined
    alert person.get( ... ) // ?

I have the appropriate JsonResult Action method and control, and have verified with Fiddler that the fetch() call is properly returning the Json data. (Which I can post tomorrow morning from the office)

I'm really new at Backbone, what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Couple things: 1) fetch is async. Try this:

person.fetch({
    success: function() {
        alert(person.get('Name')
    }
});

2) This will show that the name property is an object (but not a backbone model):

{
    Name: "Joe"
    etc...

}

You may want to use Backbone.Relational or something similar if you want Name to be a backbone model. or you can override parse to flatten out your json.