Backbone - parsing JSON ID - json

Question

I'm trying to parse JSON data using Backbone from a remote API. Here's what I've got so far:
// --------------------------------------------------
// MODELS
// --------------------------------------------------
var VideoModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
idAttribute: '_id',
parse: function(){
this.id = response._id;
}
});
var videoModel = new VideoModel({ parse:true });
// --------------------------------------------------
// COLLECTIONS
// --------------------------------------------------
var VideosCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
model: VideoModel,
url: 'redacted',
parse: function(response){
this.videos = response.data;
this.cid = response.cid;
return response.data;
},
render: function(){
this.collection.forEach(this.addone, this);
}
});
var videosCollection = new VideosCollection();
videosCollection.fetch({
success: function(videos){
console.log('success!');
},
error: function(){
console.log('failed.');
}
});
// --------------------------------------------------
// VIEWS
// --------------------------------------------------
var VideoView = Backbone.View.extend({
template: _.template('<%= videoModel.id %>'),
render: function(){
this$el.html(this.template(this.model.attributes));
return this;
}
});
var videoView = new VideoView({});
var VideosCollectionView = Backbone.View.extend({});
var videosCollectionView = new VideosCollectionView({
collection: videosCollection,
render: function(){
this.collection.forEach(this.addOne, this);
},
addOne: function(videoModel){
this.$el.append(videoView.el);
}
});
What I'm having trouble with is that console.log(videoModel.id) is still undefined.
The data is a playlist of videos, which is valid JSON:
{
"total":24,
"per_page":24,
"current_page":1,
"last_page":1,
"from":1,
"to":24,
"data":[
{
"_id":"55d1bb50140ba04c1d8b4583",
Be glad for some prompts in the right direction - especially since I had it working this morning and then ... reverted to a previous version without saving.
Thanks

Answer 1

From documentstion of parse method:
The function is passed the raw response object, and should return the
attributes hash to be set on the model. The default implementation is
a no-op, simply passing through the JSON response.
So by default it works like this:
parse: function(data) {
return data;
}
Your code now returns nothing and model takes no data.
As I see you want to set id attribute but you already have setted idAttribute property with _id and there is _id in your data so it should work fine without parse at all. Try to remove it.

Answer 2

The answer is that I was trying to parse via a Collection instead of a Model. So I would never have got the id I was looking for. For some reason.
I needed to move the URL into the Model and parse from there:
var VideoModel = Backbone.Model.extend({
idAttribute: '_id',
url: 'redacted',
parse: function(response){
var id = response._id;
var cid = response.cid;
return response.data;
},
}),
Now when I do videoModel.get(1) in the console, it returns the value of the first item in my array.