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by mikeknoop 4961 days ago
Two things you can do together to help, but need Backbone edge version (master) for the second, at the moment:

  1. myModel.on('change:title', this.render, this); // inside `myView`
  2. myView.dispose(); // when you are done with `myView`
This will automatically remove all the referenced binds onto `myView` and simply removing the root view as OP mentions is sufficient.
1 comments
chrizel 4961 days ago
But you have to keep in mind, according to the code (https://github.com/documentcloud/backbone/blob/master/backbo... ) this will only get rid of the events on this.model and this.collection. If you are using another field or model (like in your example myModel, if it is not the same as this.model) -- then you will still get memory leaks.

Backbone is a real pitfall here in larger projects and you have to keep memory leaks in mind when using Backbone events. (sadly JavaScript has no WeakMaps yet, which would solve the problem for us) That's why projects like Backbone Marionette or EventBinder exists which are handling the Backbone events leaking problem better than bare bones Backbone alone. See http://lostechies.com/derickbailey/2011/09/15/zombies-run-ma...

In a very large application I'm writing at the moment I've introduced a common View parent class which extends Backbone views with proper subview handling and correct event disposal. So in my views I can write something like this (works very similar to the Backbone view's DOM "event" mapping field, but instead of DOM events we are talking about Backbone events here) [Edit: well, looking at the submission article, that's very similar to the solution described in the article]

    objectEvents: {
      'model change': 'reload',
      'collection reset': 'render'
    }
Then my View class handles the rest: it connects the events in the constructor and disconnects them correctly on remove(). The only thing you have to keep in mind is that you have to remove all old subviews explicitly when they get recreated. That's when my subview handling kicks in, because I have some helper methods like addSubView and removeAllSubViews which get called when re-rendering the parent view.

Backbone subview handling can be a real pain and memory management has to be kept in mind. Every time you are using the "on"-method you should ask yourself when this event gets destroyed and if it could lead to a memory leak. Or you should use something like EventBinder. https://github.com/marionettejs/backbone.eventbinder

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moe 4961 days ago
Backbone subview handling can be a real pain and memory management has to be kept in mind.

Which is one of the main reasons why EmberJS was created.

Sometimes I wonder why backbone is still getting so much love when saner alternatives (Ember, Angular etc.) have been around for so long.

Is it only inertia or is there perhaps a need for a framework in the middleground between backbone and ember (in terms of abstraction)?

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