Backbone.accessors

This plugin generates accessors from the fields of a Backbone.js model. For each field XXX, the setXXX(), getXXX(), hasXXX(), and unsetXXX() methods are added. For clarity and readability, the first letter of each XXX filed is converted to uppercase.

Example:

Without accessor:	With accessor:
model.get('name')	model.getName()
model.set('name')	model.setName()
model.has('name')	model.hasName()
model.unset('name')	model.unsetName()

This plugin is compatible with AMD provided the proper shim is added.

This approach is inspired by Propel, an Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) for PHP.

Getting started

1. Include Backbone in your project before including the Backbone.accessors plugin.

2. In your models, add all fields requiring accessors to the defaults object. Set the value to undefined where no default value is desired:

   var Model = Backbone.Model.extend({
   
       defaults: {
           id          : undefined,
           firstName   : 'Mary',
           lastName    : 'Poppins'
       },
   });

3. Apply the accessor mixin to each model.

   Backbone.accessors.apply(Model);

4. Use your model normally, replacing the calls to get(), set(), has(), unset() with the custom ones:

   var model = new Model();
   
   // model.set('id', 10);
   model.setId(10);

Note: you can mix both types of accesors.

Justification

On larger projects, there is always a concern with maintaining the magic strings and numbers which are often found in JavaScript code:

model.set('firstName', name); // 'firstName' is a magic string

One solution is to populate and use a constant object, an approach commonly used in strongly-typed languages such as Java and C#:

var Constants = {
	NameModel: {
		id 			:'id',
		firstName 	: 'firstName',
		lastName 	: 'lastName'
	}
};

model.set(Constants.NameModel.firstName, name); // 'firstName' is gone

While intended to generate an error if there is a typo in Constants.NameModel.firstName, this approach will fail silently if the last identifier of the notation (in practice the most complex) has a mistake in it:

model.get(Constants.NameModel.firstNaame); // return 'undefined', no error
model.set(Constants.NameModel.firstNaame, name); // no error

On the other hand, with accessors, there is less code to type, no constant file to carry around, and the code will immediately fail (fail hard) if there is a typo in the variable name:

model.getFirstNaame(); // runtime error
model.setFirstNaame(name); // runtime error