Best way to structure json data with backbone - json

Question

I'm just about to write a web app using backbone and want to know what's the best way to structure my json file? I've read that using 'dictionary' arrays are best but was wondering if there's a better way of structuring the data. An example of how the data should be structure would be great too.
My data seems to have a lot of nested arrays and these seem to be hard to search through.

Answer 1

JSON has two types of relevant container objects.
Object and Array.
Object is probably what you're thinking of when you say "dictionary array".
You probably want an object with arrays of objects :)
{"courses": [{
"name": "Spanish 101",
"subject": "How to speak Spanish",
}, {
"name": "Introduction to Film",
"subject": "Make pretty films",
}, {
"name": "Social Psychology",
"subject": "Why people are weird.",
}],
"sections": [],
"modules": [],
"topics": [],
"lessons": [],
// etc..
}
Each of the [] items would be field with numerous objects.
Once you get this data into your APP (either JSONP, AJAX, or if it's just assinged to a variable in our page) you can put them in your Backbone collections using the reset function (See: http://backbonejs.org/#Collection-reset):
var Courses = new Backbone.Collection;
function processData(data) {
Courses.reset(data.courses);
// etc...
}