Make your Backbone.js apps dance!

Backbone.Marionette is a composite application library for Backbone.js that aims to simplify the construction of large scale JavaScript applications. It is a collection of common design and implementation patterns found in the applications that I (Derick Bailey) have been building with Backbone, and includes various pieces inspired by composite application architectures, such as Microsoft's "Prism" framework.

Backbone provides a great set of building blocks for our JavaScript applications. It gives us the core constructs that are needed to build small apps, organize jQuery DOM events, or create single page apps that support mobile devices and large scale enterprise needs. But Backbone is not a complete framework. It's a set of building blocks. It leaves much of the application design, architecture and scalability to the developer, including memory management, view management, and more.

Marionette brings an application architecture to Backbone, along with built in view management and memory management. It's designed to be a lightweight and flexible library of tools that sits on top of Backbone, providing a framework for building scalable application.

Like Backbone itself, you're not required to use all of Marionette just because you want to use some of it. You can pick and choose which features you want to use, when. This allows you to work with other Backbone frameworks and plugins very easily. It also means that you are not required to engage in an all-or-nothing migration to begin using Marionette.

• Scale applications out with modular, event driven architecture
• Sensible defaults, such as using Underscore templates for view rendering
• Easy to modify to make it work with your application's specific needs
• Reduce boilerplate for views, with specialized view types
• Build on a modular architecture with an Application and modules that attach to it
• Compose your application's visuals at runtime, with Region and Layout
• Nested views and layouts within visual regions
• Built-in memory management and zombie killing in views, regions and layouts
• Event-driven architecture with Backbone.Wreqr.EventAggregator
• Flexible, "as-needed" architecture allowing you to pick and choose what you need
• And much, much more

You can download the latest builds directly from the "lib" folder above.
For more information about the files in this folder, or to obtain an archive containing all Marionette dependencies (including Underscore, Backbone, etc), please see the downloads section on the website.

Marionette is unofficially available from various package management systems, such as RubyGems, Node Package Manager, Nuget, etc. These packages are maintained by the community and are not part of the core Backbone.Marionette code.

Changelog: For change logs and release notes, see the changelog file.

Upgrade Guide: Be sure to read the upgrade guide for information on upgrading to the latest version of Marionette.

The primary documentation is split up in to multiple files, due to the size of the over-all documentation. You can find these files in the /docs folder, or use the links below to get straight to the documentation for each piece of Marionette.

In addition to this readme, I've commented the source code quite heavily and run it through Docco as part of my build process. This produces a nicely formatted, annotated source code as documentation file.

You can read the annotated for all the detail of how Marionette works, and advice on which methods to override when.

Marionette provides a few globally configurable settings, such as which DOM library to use (jQuery by default). You can find out more about which settings will change Marionette in the configuration documentation.

These are the strings that you can pull to make your puppet dance. If you're looking for an introduction and/or examples on how to get started, please see the Wiki.

Views

• Marionette.ItemView: A view that renders a single item
• Marionette.CollectionView: A view that iterates over a collection, and renders individual ItemView instances for each model
• Marionette.CompositeView: A collection view and item view, for rendering leaf-branch/composite model hierarchies
• Marionette.Layout: A view that renders a layout and creates region managers to manage areas within it
• Marionette.View: The base View type that other Marionette views extend from (not intended to be used directly)

View Management

• Marionette.Region: Manage visual regions of your application, including display and removal of content
• Marionette.RegionManager: Manage a group of related Regions
• Marionette.Renderer: Render templates with or without data, in a consistent and common manner
• Marionette.TemplateCache: Cache templates that are stored in <script> blocks, for faster subsequent access
• [→] Backbone.BabySitter: Manage child views for your Backbone.View (and other parents)

Application Infrastructure

• Marionette.Application: An application object that starts your app via initializers, and more
• Marionette.Module: Create modules and sub-modules within the application
• Marionette.Controller: A general purpose object for controlling modules, routers, view, and implementing a mediator pattern

Object-Messaging Infrastructure

• Marionette.Commands: An extension of Backbone.Wreqr.Commands, a simple command execution framework
• Marionette.RequestResponse: An extension of Backbone.Wreqr.RequestResponse, a simple request/response framework
• [→] Backbone.Wreqr.EventAggregator: An event aggregator, to facilitate pub/sub and event architecture. Part of a suite of messaging based patterns
• [→] Backbone.Wreqr.Commands: A simple command execution system
• [→] Backbone.Wreqr.RequestResponse: A simple request/response system

Other

• Marionette.AppRouter: Reduce your routers to nothing more than configuration
• Marionette.Callbacks: Manage a collection of callback methods, and execute them as needed
• Marionette.functions: A suite of helper functions and utilities for implementing common Marionette behavior in your objects

Deprecated Items

• [→] Backbone.EventBinder: Deprecated w/ Backbone v0.9.9 and higher. An event binding manager for Backbone v0.9.2, to facilitate binding and unbinding of events

A wiki is an important aspect of a thriving community, as it provides a place for the community to contribute ideas, examples, answer frequently asked questions, and more. If you're looking for community-driven information, examples that go beyond the dry technical documentation, or want to contribute your own ideas and examples to the community, please see the wiki page.

MarionetteJS currently works with the following libraries:

• jQuery v1.8.x or v1.9.x
• Underscore v1.4.4
• Backbone v1.0 is preferred. v0.9.9 and v0.9.10 should work still
• Backbone.Wreqr
• Backbone.BabySitter

Marionette has been tested against any other versions of these libraries in the past, but is only tested against the latest versions at this time. You may or may not have success if you use a version other than what it listed here.

While support for Zepto and Enderjs has been added, it is not officially tested against these libraries at this time.

Marionette makes use of jQuery's Deferred objects and, as such, will need supported methods in replacement libraries. Zepto users can use @Mumakil's Standalone-Deferred or @sudhirj's simply-deferred. Enderjs users, please let us know of how you solve any compatibility issues.

Marionette no longer relies on Backbone.EventBinder. Backbone.Events, as of v0.9.9, supersedes this library with its listenTo and stopListening methods. See the upgrade guide for more information.

Marionette needs your support, but not everyone can offer assistance with code, bug submissions, and answering questions. If you're using Marionette and you're finding that it is saving you as much time and effort as I believe it does, then please consider financial support for the project.

Please see the footer of MarionetteJS.com for links to donate.

If you would like to contribute to Marionette's source code, please read the guidelines for pull requests and contributions. Following these guidelines will help make your contributions easier to bring in to the next release.

Join the #marionette channel on FreeNode.net to ask questions and get help.

Get announcements for new releases, share your projects and ideas that are using Marionette, and join in open-ended discussion that does not fit in to the Github issues list or StackOverflow Q&A.

For help with syntax, specific questions on how to implement a feature using Marionette, and other Q&A items, use StackOverflow.

Ask questions about using Marionette in specific scenarios, with specific features. For example, help with syntax, understanding how a feature works and how to override that feature to do what you need or how to organize the different view types to work best with your applications needs.

Questions on StackOverflow often turn in to blog posts and wiki entries.

Report issues with Marionette, submit pull requests to fix problems, or to create summarized and documented feature requests (preferably with pull requests that implement the feature).

Please don't ask questions or seek help in the issues list. There are other, better channels for seeking assistance, like StackOverflow and the Google Groups mailing list.

Lastly, I blog about Marionette on a regular basis, at my LosTechies.com blog.

Copyright (c) 2012 Derick Bailey; Muted Solutions, LLC

Distributed under MIT license.