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@addyosmani
Created February 4, 2012 19:37
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Backbone.js global pub/sub

Generally one implements notifications by listening for events on specific models but if one wishes to have a single global message interchange, it could be done as follows:

var pubsub = new Backbone.Model;

View1 = Backbone.View.extend({
  initialize: function(){
    pubsub.bind('custom event', callback);
  }
  // ...
});

View2 = Backbone.View.extend({
  // ...
  foo: function(){
    pubsub.trigger('custom event', data);
  }
});

or the reverse if one wished to publish events from models or collections.

@steckel
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steckel commented Mar 26, 2012

Any particular reason you prefer making the pubsub object a new instance of a Backbone.Model object over cloning the Backbone.Events object? Not sure if there is performance reasons or syntax preference...

var pubsub = {};
_.extend(pubsub, Backbone.Events);

View1 = Backbone.View.extend({
  initialize: function(){
    pubsub.bind('custom:event another:event', callbackForTwoEvents, this);
  }

  callbackForTwoEvents: function(data) {
    console.log(data);
  }
  // ...
});

View2 = Backbone.View.extend({
  // ...
  foo: function(){
    pubsub.trigger('custom:event', data);
  }
});

View3 = Backbone.View.extend({
  // ...
  bar: function(){
    pubsub.trigger('another:event', data);
  }
});

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