Fun with Backbone.Collection and _.map

gistfile1.coffee

# Backbone.Collection's `where` is very useful for quickly selecting
# parts of a Collection, and it returns an array. But an array of
# Backbone.Models isn't terribly helpful if you want to insert that
# into a template which expects an array of raw objects. This might help
# you a little, though:

collectionToRaw = (collection, key) ->
  _.map (collection.where "type" : key), (filtered) ->
    filtered.toJSON()

# Assuming you have a simple Backbone.Model with a `type` attribute,
# and a collection called `myCollection` of these models, some which
# are `foo` and some `bar`, you can get an array of raw objects who
# are of type `foo` and a second of type `bar` like this:

data =
  "foo" : collectionToRaw(myCollection, "foo")
  "bar" : collectionToRaw(myCollection, "bar")

# You can then pass this into your template:

template = MyTemplate(data)

An alternative (and perhaps nicer) way of doing this would probably be:

Backbone.Collection::toRaw = (key) -> _.map (@where "type" : key), (filtered) -> filtered.toJSON()

And then you can say:

myCollection.toRaw("foo")

to get an array of raw foo objects.