Adding one line to Backbone.js to provide seamless CoffeeScript integration (inheritance from Backbone.Model, View, Collection) + tests

Author: jashkenas

Rakefile

@@ -18,4 +18,9 @@ end
 desc "run JavaScriptLint on the source"
 task :lint do
   system "jsl -nofilelisting -nologo -conf docs/jsl.conf -process backbone.js"
+end
+
+desc "test the CoffeeScript integration"
+task :test do
+  system "coffee test/*.coffee"
 end

backbone.js

@@ -695,6 +695,7 @@
     _.extend(child.prototype, protoProps);
     if (classProps) _.extend(child, classProps);
     child.prototype.constructor = child;
+    child.__super__ = parent.prototype;
     return child;
   };
 

test/model.coffee

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+# Quick Backbone/CoffeeScript tests to make sure that inheritance
+# works correctly.
+
+{ok, equal, deepEqual}      = require 'assert'
+{Model, Collection, Events} = require '../backbone'
+
+
+# Patch `ok` to store a count of passed tests...
+count = 0
+oldOk = ok
+ok = ->
+  oldOk arguments...
+  count++
+
+
+class Document extends Model
+
+  fullName: ->
+    @get('name') + ' ' + @get('surname')
+
+tempest = new Document
+  id      : '1-the-tempest',
+  title   : "The Tempest",
+  name    : "William"
+  surname : "Shakespeare"
+  length  : 123
+
+ok tempest.fullName() is "William Shakespeare"
+ok tempest.get('length') is 123
+
+
+class ProperDocument extends Document
+
+  fullName: ->
+    "Mr. " + super
+
+properTempest = new ProperDocument tempest.attributes
+
+ok properTempest.fullName() is "Mr. William Shakespeare"
+ok properTempest.get('length') is 123
+
+
+console.log "passed #{count} tests"