Rack::Backbone

Backbone CDN script tags and fallback in one neat package.

Build status

Master branch: Build Status

Why?

I get tired of copy and pasting and downloading and moving… Backbone files and script tags etc. This does it for me, and keeps version management nice 'n' easy.

Note

This library does not supply any other dependencies (like underscore.js/lo-dash.js) - that is up to you to provide!

Usage

Have a look in the examples directory, but here's a snippet.

  • Install it (see below)
  • require 'rack/backbone'.
  • If you want fallback then add this to your middleware stack: use Rack::Backbone
  • Put this in the head of your layout (the example is Haml but you can use whatever you like) and pass it the Rack env:

    
    %head
      = Rack::Backbone.cdn( env )
    

Now you have the script tags to Cloudflare's CDN (or you can use jsdelivr, see the docs).

It also adds in a bit of javascript that will load in a locally kept version of Backbone, just incase the CDN is unreachable. The script will use the "/js/backbone-1.0.0-min.js" path (or, instead of 1.0.0, whatever is in Rack::Backbone::VERSION). You can change the "/js" bit if you like (see the docs).

That was easy.

Version numbers

This library uses semver to version the library. That means the library version is not an indicator of quality but a way to manage changes. The version of Backbone can be found in the lib/rack/backbone/version.rb file, or via the Rack::Backbone::BACKBONE_VERSION constant.

On top of that, version numbers will also change when new releases of Backbone are supported.

  • If Backbone makes a major version jump, then this library will make a minor jump. That is because the API for the library has not really changed, but it is possibly a change that will break things.
  • If Backbone makes a minor version jump, then so will this library, for the same reason as above.
  • I doubt point releases will be followed, but if so, it will also precipitate a minor jump in this library's version number. That's because even though Backbone feel it's a point release, I'm not them, my responsibility is to users of this library and I'll take the cautious approach of making it a minor version number change.

As an example, if the current library version was 1.0.0 and Backbone was at 2.0.0 and I made a change that I felt was major and breaking (to the Ruby library), I'd bump Rack::Backbone's version to 2.0.0. That the version numbers match between Rack::Backbone and the Backbone script is of no significance, it's just coincidental.
If then Backbone went to v2.1.0 and I decided to support that, I'd make the changes and bump Rack::Backbone's version to 2.1.0. That the version numbers match between Rack::Backbone and the Backbone script is of no significance, it's just coincidental.
If then I made a minor change to the library's API that could be breaking I'd bump it to 2.2.0.
If I then added some more instructions I'd bump Rack::Backbone's version to 2.2.1.
If then Backbone released version 3.0.0, I'd add it to the library, and bump Rack::Backbone's version to 2.3.0.

Only one version of Backbone will be supported at a time. This is because the fallback script is shipped with the gem and I'd like to keep it as light as possible. It's also a headache to have more than one.

So basically, if you want to use a specific version of Backbone, look for the library version that supports it via the Rack::Backbone::BACKBONE_VERSION constant. Don't rely on the version numbers of this library to tell you anything other than compatibility between versions of this library.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rack-backbone'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install rack-backbone

Contributing

  1. Fork it
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create new Pull Request

Licences

The licence for this library is contained in LICENCE.txt. The Backbone library licence is contained in BACKBONE-LICENCE.txt.