Removing the jquery/zepto dependency on backbone.router and views

Question

Is there a forked/maintained version of backbone that completely eliminates the need for jquery or zepto to use both the router and views?

I wouldn't mind using backbone but there's no way in heck I'd force a jquery dependency on my page just to use it.

If a solution doesn't exist can someone post a gist of what needs to be changed exactly?

Answer 1

If you want Backbone to handle DOM manipulation, DOM events, and AJAX requests, then you'll need another library to do this. It doesn't have to be jQuery or Zepto - Backbone also supports Ender, and you could theoretically use any library that can do DOM selection and supports a subset of jQuery-style methods. A quick look through the annotated source code shows that you need the following methods:

• $(selector)
• $.ajax()
• $(selector).find()
• $(selector).bind()
• $(selector).unbind()
• $(selector).delegate()
• $(selector).remove()
• $(selector).attr()
• $(selector).html()

If you don't want Backbone to deal with this stuff, you can pretty easily remove the requirements by overwriting the methods that use them - e.g. you can dispense with .attr() and .html() by setting Backbone.View.prototype.make = function() {}. Or just don't use Backbone.View - that removes the need for everything but $.ajax() (unless you're using pushState, in which case you need event binding too).

Answer 2

Yup here's one: https://github.com/inkling/backbone.native. It's a tiny adapter that allows Backbone to work while relying on only native DOM APIs.