Atlas

The name is from this [atlas](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_(anatomy%29) and in a clear reference to Backbone

Description

First of all this is written in Coffeescript but it also provides a Javascript compiled version. Its main purpose is to give Backbone the ability to load nested models from json, also gives some sugar to access the .get(attribute) values.

Example

Creating classes

class @Comment extends Backbone.Atlas.Model
  initialize: (attributes) ->
    @has attributes,
      comments: CommentList
      author: User

class @CommentList extends Backbone.Atlas.Collection
  model: Comment

class @Post extends Backbone.Atlas.Model
  initialize: (attributes) ->
    @has attributes, comments: CommentList, created_by: User

class @User extends Backbone.Atlas.Model

This can be translated to Rails ActiveRecord like this:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :comments
  has_one :author, class_name: "User"
end

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :created_by, class_name: "User"
  has_many :comments
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
end

Creating and loading instances

As we are talking of javascript objects we need to load data in them, so:

post = new Post(
  {
    'title': "Test Title",
    'body': "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus vitae risus vitae lorem iaculis placerat.",
    'created_by': {
      'id': 1
      'name': "Zeus"
    },
    'comments': [
      {
        'id': 4,
        'body': "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus vitae risus vitae lorem iaculis placerat.",
        'comments': [
          {
            'id': 54,
            'body': "Hello from Valhala",
            'author': { 'id': 90, 'name': "Odin"}
          }
        ],
        'author': {
          'id': 2,
          'name': "Hermes",
        }
      },
      {
        'id': 5,
        'body': "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vivamus vitae risus vitae lorem iaculis placerat.",
        'author': {
          'id': 3,
          'name': "Persefone",
        }
      }
    ]
  }
);

So using Backbone.Atlas as you will use Rails:

post.title
=> "Test Title"

post.comments.first()
=> Comment()

post.comments.last().id
=> 5

post.comments.first().comments.first().author.name
=> "Odin"