Common pattern for populating select list data in Backbone views?

Question

My Backbone app has several views containing forms with text inputs select fields, and checkboxes. The select fields should be populated using data from my API. A given select field may be reused in multiple different forms.

What's a commonly-used approach for populating these dropdowns? Here's a solution I've rigged together...is there a more common approach?

A reusable select field which populates itself...app/views/shared/location_selection.js:

define([
  'jquery',
  'backbone',
  'app/views/base',
  'app/collections/location'
], function($, Backbone, BaseView, LocationCollection) {
  'use strict';

  return BaseView.extend({
    initialize: function(options) {
      this.options = options || {};
      this.options.id = this.options.id || 'location';
      this.options.showBlank = typeof this.options.showBlank != 'undefined' ? this.options.showBlank : false;

      this.collection = new LocationCollection();
    },

    render: function() {
      this.setElement('<select id="' + this.options.id + '"></select>');

      var self = this;
      this.collection.fetch({
        success: function() {
          if (self.options.showBlank) {
            self.$el.append('<option></option');
          }

          self.collection.each(function(model) {
            self.$el.append('<option value="' + model.get('id') + '">' + model.get('name') + '</option>');
          });
        }
      });

      return this;
    }
  });
});

And a snippet from another view which uses that view:

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

  var locationSelectionView = new LocationSelectionView({ showBlank: !this.model.get('id') });
  this.$('.location').append(locationSelectionView.render().el);

  return this;
},

And the form template:

<form role="form">
  <div class="form-group">
    <label for="imei">IMEI</label>
    <input type="text" class="form-control" id="imei" value="{{data.imei}}" />
  </div>
  <div class="form-group location">
    <label for="location">Location</label>
  </div>
  <div class="checkbox">
    <label><input id="master" type="checkbox"{{#if master}} checked="checked"{{/if}} /> Master</label>
  </div>
</form>

Answer 1

If you have separate templates for both your item view and collection view you can do it this way:

var ItemView = Backbone.View.extend({
    tagName: 'option',
    initialize:function(){        
        this.template= _.template($('#menu_item_view').html());    
    },    
    render:function(){        
        this.$el.html(this.template(this.model.toJSON()));        
        return this;        
    }
});

var CollectionView = Backbone.View.extend({
    tagName: 'select',
    initialize:function(){        
        this.collection = new ItemCollection();            
        this.collection.on('sync',this.render,this);            
        this.collection.fetch();
    },    
    render:function(){        
        _.each(this.collection.models,function( item ){            
            this.$el.append(new ItemView({model:item}).render().el );        
        },this);      
        return this;        
    }
});

Edit: just as a note, before Backbone 1.0 when you called fetch it use to trigger 'reset' but now it triggers 'sync' unless you write fetch({reset:true}). So depending on the version of Backbone you are running, be aware of that.