Backbone.Marionette: CompositeView disappear after collection.reset() is fired - backbone.js

Question

I'm quite new in the world of Backbone and I decided to use Marionette for my first serious project with it.
With some difficulties I managed to set up my app's basic options and routing and I was pretty happy with it, but now I'm facing a blocking problem with a CompositeView that represent a Table.
This View is rendered inside a region of a specific layout, called "grid". This layout has 3 region: the top_controls, table_view and bottom_controls. Since I needed to bind some action on some of the elements of the layout I decided to use it as a View, and to include the "master" collection inside it, so I can just rendered a filtered version of the collection inside the CompositeView, without touching the main one.
From my router I call it in this way:
App.grid = new Grid({collection: Clt});
App.page.show(App.grid);
The structure of the layout is this (I'm using requireJS):
var Grid = Backbone.Marionette.Layout.extend({
className: "container-fluid",
template: gridLayout,
regions: {
top_controls: "#top_controls",
table_view: "#table_view",
bottom_controls: "#bottom_controls",
},
initialize: function(){
this.renderTable(this.collection, true);
},
renderTable: function(collection, fetch){
if(fetch){
collection.fetch({success:function(){
var vista = new CompView({collection: collection});
App.grid.table_view.show(vista);
}});
} else {
var vista = new CompView({collection: collection});
App.grid.table_view.show(vista);
}
},
events: {
"keyup input":"filter_grid"
},
filter_grid: function(e){
var $el = e.currentTarget;
var to_filter = $($el).val();
if(to_filter==""){
this.renderTable(this.collection, false);
} else {
var filtered = this.collection.filter(function(item){
return item.get("link_scheda").toLowerCase() == to_filter;
});
if(filtered.length>0){
var filtro = new AssocCollection();
filtro.reset(filtered);
this.renderTable(filtro, false);
}
}
}
});
return Grid;
The Layout template looks like this:
<div class="row-fluid" id="top_controls"><input type="text" id="filter" class="input"/></div>
<div class="row-fluid" id="table_view"></div>
<div class="row-fluid" id="bottom_controls"><button class='add btn btn-primary'>Add</button></div>
My CompositeView is structured like that:
var AssocView = Backbone.Marionette.CompositeView.extend({
tagName: 'table',
className: 'table table-bordered table-striped',
id: 'tableAssoc',
template: assocTemplate,
itemView: assocRow,
appendHtml: function(collectionView, itemView, index){
collectionView.$("tbody").append(itemView.el);
},
events: {
"click .sort_link":"sort_for_link",
},
sort_for_link: function(){
this.collection.comparator = function(model){
return model.get("link_value");
}
this.collection.sort();
},
onRender: function(){
console.log("render table!");
}
});
return AssocView;
The first display of the table is done right, and the filtering too. The problem occur when
I click the table header with the class "sort_link": the entire Table is wiped away from the HTML while the collection stay the same (I suppode the entire layout is re-rendered). If for example I render the CompositeView in another place, like the app main region, it all works as intended. So I guess to problem it's located inside my Layout declaration.
Any help will be much appreciated!

Answer 1

In your Grid, you need to override the initialEvents method and don't do anything in it.
Grid = Backbone.Marionette.Layout.extend({
initialEvents: function(){},
// ... everything you already have
});
Layout extends from ItemView, and ItemView provides the initialEvents implementation. This method checks to see if it was given a collection, and if it does, it wires up the collection "reset" event to the "render" method of the view. In your case, you are passing the collection through and don't want this behavior. So, overriding the initialEvents method will correct it.
Update: I thought I had removed that initialEvents a long time ago. If you're keeping up to date w/ Marionette versions, grab v0.9.10 (or whatever the latest is) and this problem is gone now.