Backbone.js Can we not have any tagName?

Question

I just started with backbone.js, and one thing that I noticed is that sometimes I do not want any tagName to contain/encapsulate my view's template code. If I leave it at '' or 'span', I get unneccessary div and span in my code.

The alternative that I found is to remove the containing tag from my template (<div class="photo_box"> in my example as shown below), and use that as the tagName in my view. Most of the time, this tag will contain a class (.photo_box), and I still have to perform an addClass to (this.el). I dont really like scattering up my template code.

Is there another way?

JS

// Views
PhotoListView = Backbone.View.extend({
    tagName: 'span',

    render: function() {
        _.each(this.model.models, function(photo) {
            $(this.el).append(new PhotoListItemView({ model: photo }).render().el);
        }, this);
        return this;
    }
});

PhotoListItemView = Backbone.View.extend({
    tagName: 'span',

    template: _.template($('#tpl-PhotoListItemView').html()),

    render: function() {
        $(this.el).html(this.template( this.model.toJSON() ));
        return this;
    }


});

HTML

<!-- Templates -->
<script type="text/template" id="tpl-PhotoListItemView">
                <div class="photo_box">
                    <div class="photo_container">
                        <img src="img/profiling/<%= photo_id %>.jpg" class='photo' />
                    </div>
                </div>
</script>

Result

<div id="photo_list">
    <span>
        <span>
                    <div class="photo_box">
                        <div class="photo_container">
                            <img src="img/profiling/f_001.jpg" class="photo">
                        </div>
                    </div>
        </span>
        <span>
                    <div class="photo_box">
                        <div class="photo_container">
                            <img src="img/profiling/f_002.jpg" class="photo">
                        </div>
                    </div>
        </span>
    </span>
</div>

Answer 1

You could always use setElement:

setElement view.setElement(element)

If you'd like to apply a Backbone view to a different DOM element, use setElement, which will also create the cached $el reference and move the view's delegated events from the old element to the new one.

and forget about tagName completely:

PhotoListItemView = Backbone.View.extend({
    template: _.template($('#tpl-PhotoListItemView').html()),
    render: function() {
        this.setElement(this.template(this.model.toJSON()));
        return this;
    }
});

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/ambiguous/XWEMg/

---

As an aside, <span> is a poor choice for a container (even a temporary one) due to its limited permitted content; you risk the browser rearranging your HTML to get something valid if you start throwing arbitrary HTML into a <span>. A <div> is a much safer choice as it can hold pretty much anything.