Destroying a Backbone Model in a Collection in one step?

Question

Are these two steps mandatory to delete a Model?

var model = collection.get(id);
model.destroy();
collection.remove(model);

Isn't there a way to destroy a model when it is removed from its collection?

Solution 1

Model.bind("remove", function() {
  this.destroy();
});
...
var model = new Model();
...
collection.remove(model);

Removing a model from a collection triggers the "remove" event.

So if you want to, you can get models to bind to them and destroy themselves.

Solution 2

Calling collection.reset() without passing any models as arguments will empty the entire collection.

http://backbonejs.org/#Collection-reset

Comments

[pooja upadhyay]

Thanks for this, however it's fairly unintuitive IMO. Is there any reason why you WOULDN'T want a model destroyed when calling remove on the collection (at least enough of a reason for this not to be the default behavior). Is this worth raising as a feature request on github?

[Raynos]

@kissmyface Collections are arbitary (like in database terms) views over models. If I decide you shouldn't see Model X in View (collection) Y why would model X be destroyed?

[pooja upadhyay]

That's a nice analogy. I didn't realize that they were quite so decoupled (all my code so far has had quite rigid links between collections and models). Thanks for the clarification.

[Raynos]

@kissmyface however this doesn't mean we shouldn't have sugar like have with .create we could have a .destroy that destroys and removes a model on a collection

[pooja upadhyay]

That's exactly what I did. I created a destroy method on my controller (takes a id as a param). Inside I destroy the model and then remove it from the collection - it works great.

[Henry]

I tried this, but destory() will invoke the remove event again, and remove event will invoke destory() again, so it ends up calling sync twice. Is this expected?