backbone.js accessing model attributes within model - this.attribute VS this.get('attribute')?

Question

From my understanding the attributes of a Backbone.js model are supposed to be declared as somewhat private member variables by saying

this.set({ attributeName:          


        

Answer 1

Never is an incomplete answer.

Sometimes you want access to the collection of model attributes - whatever those attributes might be. Consider a utility method to perform calcs on attributes, format them for output, etc.

A convenient way to do this is to access model.attributes

Consider one alternative, below:

var attributesNames = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz'];
var attributes = _(attributesNames ).map(function(attr) { return model.get(attr); });

callSomeUtilityMethod(attributes);

Two problems:

• We've introduced coupling in the "attributeNames" collection. What if that list changes?
• We've lost the association of name/value. We could rewrite the map above, but it becomes more work.

In this scenario, it's much more convenient to do something like this:

callSomeUtilityMethod(model.attributes);