Calling a jQuery plugin in a Backbone render method

Question

I have a render method in Backbone that goes basically like this:

render: function () {
  $.tmpl(this.template, attrs).appendTo(this.el);
  return this;
},
         


        

Answer 1

I was facing a similar issue but in my case even the above solutions wouldn't work because the parent views hadn't been added to the DOM yet.

Sticking with the convention of having the parent view add the children to the DOM, doing loadPlugins() in the render method didn't work.

This is what I did. It feels kind of hacky but could help, depending on how you're managing your views throughout the hierarchy:

render: function() {
  var self = this;

  setTimeout(function() {
    $(self.el).setupPlugin();
  }, 0);

  return this;
}

Using a setTimeout of 0 allows the current call stack to finish, so by the time the timeout function gets called the view and all it's parents have been added to the DOM. (If you stick to the convention mentioned above).