Is there a forked/maintained version of backbone that pletely eliminates the need for jquery or zepto to use both the router and views?

I wouldn't mind using backbone but there's no way in heck I'd force a jquery dependency on my page just to use it.

If a solution doesn't exist can someone post a gist of what needs to be changed exactly?

Is there a forked/maintained version of backbone that pletely eliminates the need for jquery or zepto to use both the router and views?

I wouldn't mind using backbone but there's no way in heck I'd force a jquery dependency on my page just to use it.

If a solution doesn't exist can someone post a gist of what needs to be changed exactly?

• javascript
• jquery
• web-applications
• backbone.js
• client-side

• Given that the event handling system for views is based on $.delegate and friends, I think you're very much out of luck. – mu is too short Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 17:11
• Indeed. :/ [character limitation] – AntelopeSalad Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 17:56

3 Answers 3

If you want Backbone to handle DOM manipulation, DOM events, and AJAX requests, then you'll need another library to do this. It doesn't have to be jQuery or Zepto - Backbone also supports Ender, and you could theoretically use any library that can do DOM selection and supports a subset of jQuery-style methods. A quick look through the annotated source code shows that you need the following methods:

• $(selector)
• $.ajax()
• $(selector).find()
• $(selector).bind()
• $(selector).unbind()
• $(selector).delegate()
• $(selector).remove()
• $(selector).attr()
• $(selector).html()

If you don't want Backbone to deal with this stuff, you can pretty easily remove the requirements by overwriting the methods that use them - e.g. you can dispense with .attr() and .html() by setting Backbone.View.prototype.make = function() {}. Or just don't use Backbone.View - that removes the need for everything but $.ajax() (unless you're using pushState, in which case you need event binding too).

Yup here's one: https://github./inkling/backbone.native. It's a tiny adapter that allows Backbone to work while relying on only native DOM APIs.

You can try to use jBone, this is library for DOM manipulations in modern browsers, jBone developed special for Backbone, only 2kb gzipped and jQuery like API.