Backbone.js template: Render HTML from model? - html

Question

I have an API that return HTML serialized in JSON accessed through a REST API. When I try to render the HTML from the API response, the HTML code is display as such:
<p>Hello this is a response!</p>, instead of as: Hello this is a response!
Is there any way to work around this?
Also, what are the potential security issues with doing this and actually render the HTML?
Best regards and help is much appreciated. :)
EDIT: Here are my models and my template. Sufficient to say, I'm new to Backbone.js, and this is mostly based on the Todos example.
Views:
app.DataView = Backbone.View.extend({
tagName: "li",
template: _.template($("#data-template").html()),
initialize: function() {
this.render();
},
render: function() {
this.$el.html(this.template(this.model.toJSON()));
return this;
}
});
app.AppView = Backbone.View.extend({
el: "#htmldataapp",
initialize: function() {
app.datamodels.on('reset', this.addAll, this);
app.datamodels.fetch();
this.render();
},
addOne: function(datamodel) {
var view = new app.DataView({model: datamodel});
$('#data-list').append(view.render().el);
},
addAll: function() {
this.$('#data-list').html('');
app.datamodels.each(this.addOne, this);
}
});
Template:
<script type="text/template" id="data-template">
<%= data %>
</script>

Answer 1

You state that your api sends you HTML already?
So could it be that the data you get back is like <p>Hello this is a response!</p>, thus including the HTML tags?
If you would have underscore render this string in a template, it's no surprise you actually get the HTML tags to display.
Look at the generated source of the page, is the string Hello this is a response! wrapped in double <p> elements?
I would suggest changing your API in such a way that it returns data only (i.e. the string without the HTML), and have your HTML rendering be done by the underscore template engine.
Hope it helps!
EDIT:
I think you were using the underscore template function to often, causing the data to be rendered as a string.
Please see this fiddle for a sample setup how I think you should setup your app