A moderately successful experiment in retrofitting (dynamically, at runtime)
classes that I wrote as straight JS (with some jQuery utility methods) so that
they'll function as Backbone.Model classes. Part of the point is so that I can
keep using the original classes with the original codebase and also with the new
Backbone codebase.

The gist of it is that it copies the methods and properties (which will become
the Backbone model attributes) from the legacy class to a new object which is
passed to Backbone.Model.extend().  For the attribute properties, getters /
setters (in this case, the ES5 variety) are created, which proxy to
Backbone.Model get() / set(). That allows standard property access in the
original class to continue to function, while populating Backbone Model
attributes (accessible by Backbone.Model get() / set() in the Backbone code).
E.g.

// Original class

var something = this.whatever;

this.something = "whatever";


// Backbone code

this.get( 'something' ) === "whatever";


Jesse McCarthy
2012-07-22