Backbone.js - Parsing the Response from the Server

var CarCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
				
	//Specify REST URL
	url: 'http://localhost:8500/rest/Car/CarService',
	
	initialize: function () {
		this.bind("reset", function (model, options) {
			console.log("Inside event");
			console.log(model);
			
		});
	}	
});

var carCollectionInstance = new CarCollection();
			
carCollectionInstance.fetch({
	success: function(response,xhr) {
		 console.log("Inside success");
		 console.log(response);
	},
	error: function (errorResponse) {
	       console.log(errorResponse)
	}
});

As you can see I've defined a Collection - CarCollection and an instance of this collection - carCollectionInstance. Then I'm calling fetch on the instance, passing the success and the error callback functions. When you invoke fetch on a collection instance it would send a Ajax request to the server using jQuery's $.ajax(). Therefore it is important for you to include jQuery in the page. The URL that I've specified is a URL referring a REST resource on my ColdFusion server. This REST resource fetches some records from the database and returns the Query data in JSON format:

{"COLUMNS":["BRAND","MODEL","COLOR"],"DATA":[["Ford","Figo","RED"],["Ford","Fiesta","BLACK"],["Honda","CRV","GREEN"],["Honda","CITY","WHITE"]]}

P.S. I'm not including the code for the ColdFusion REST resource that fetches the records from the database. This is beyond the scope of this post, however you can refer to the series of posts that I've written on RESTful WebServices in ColdFusion here - http://www.sagarganatra.com/search/label/REST

The JSON response contains two keys 'COLUMNS' and 'DATA', but essentially it is one JSON object. Since the collection is modified the reset event bound to the collection would be called first and then the success handler:

Inside event d {length: 1, models: Array[1], _byId: Object, _byCid: Object, _callbacks: Object} Inside success d {length: 1, models: Array[1], _byId: Object, _byCid: Object, _callbacks: Object}

You can see that there is only one model object added to the Collection. The Model objection contains the keys 'COLUMN' and 'DATA'. This is not the format in which I wanted my collection to look like. I wanted a collection that looked like this:

{BRAND: "Ford", MODEL: "Figo", COLOR: "RED"} {BRAND: "Honda", MODEL: "CRV", COLOR: "GREEN"} ....

After reading Backbone documentation, I came across the property called parse that can be defined in the Collection. When parse is defined, the response of the fetch is first given to this function and then the reset and success event handlers are invoked. In parse you can modify the collection as per your need and it is very important to return the data from this function:

(function () {
	
	//Create a Car Collection
	var CarCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
		
		//Specify REST URL
		url: 'http://localhost:8500/rest/Car/CarService',
		
		//Parse the response
		parse: function (response) {
			
			console.log("Inside Parse");
			
			//keys
			var keys = response.COLUMNS;
			
			//values
			var values = response.DATA;
						
			//Parse the response and construct models			
			for (var i = 0, length = values.length; i < length; i++) {
				
				var currentValues = values[i];
				var carObject = {};
				for (var j = 0, valuesLength = currentValues.length; j < valuesLength; j++) {
					carObject[keys[j]] = currentValues[j];
				}
				
				//push the model object
				this.push(carObject);	
			}
			
			console.log(this.toJSON());
			
			//return models
			return this.models;
	
		},
		
		initialize: function () {
			this.bind("reset", function (model, options) {
				console.log("Inside event");
				console.log(model);
				
			});
		}
		
	});
	
	
	var carCollectionInstance = new CarCollection();
	
	carCollectionInstance.fetch({
		success: function(response,xhr) {
			console.log("Inside success");
			console.log(response);
		},
		error: function (errorResponse) {
			console.log(errorResponse)
		}
	});
	
})();

The return statement in the parse function is very important, because if it's not present then it would result in an empty collection. Now when I log the output, I can see that the collection contains Models in the desired format. Also, you would see that there are four models in collection in both reset and success event handlers.