Placing Backbone Models in external files using node.js

Question

Placing Backbone Models in external files using node.js

I'm trying to find my way through node.js and backbone.js. My intention is to share at least all model-states with the server and browser. Right now I'm not quite sure if I really need to share views as well. I also want to handle all routes by express and nodejs and not backbone. To keep my code a wee bit more structured I was looking forward to keep each model in a separate *.js file. By doing so I'm running into following error message:

TypeError: Object #<Object> has no method 'extend'

I thought it might be a problem with underscore missing in the separate file, so here is my basemodel:

models/BaseModel.js

var Backbone = require('../node_modules/backbone'),
_ = require('../node_modules/underscore'),

var BaseModel = Backbone.Model.extend({

  modelName: 'basemodel'

});

exports.BaseModel = BaseModel;

app.js var BaseModel = require('./models/BaseModel');

var MyModel = BaseModel.extend({
// ... attributes, functions etc.

});

Does anyone have a hint what I'm doing wrong there?

node.js
backbone.js

Answer 1

Then try this code in app.js:

BaseModel = require('./models/BaseModel').BaseModel;

Or in models/BaseModel.js not of exports.BaseModel = BaseModel; use it - module.exports = BaseModel

Answer 2

I actually figured it out. The flaw was in referencing to the BaseModel, so

this

var MyModel = BaseModel.extend({
  //
});

had to turn into:

var MyModel = BaseModel.BaseModel.extend({
   //
};

because of exports.BaseModel = BaseModel; in BaseModel.js