Backbone.Undo.js

An extremely simple undo manager for Backbone.js

Advantages of Backbone.Undo.js

• The Drop-In Manager

  In comparison to undo managers that implement the memento pattern you don't have to modify your models and collections to use Backbone.Undo.js. Just drop in Backbone.Undo.js and register the objects whose actions you want to undo. That way it's not only easy to include Backbone.Undo.js, but also to exclude it in case you don't want to use it any longer at some point.

• Ready To Go: Based on Backbone-Events

  You don't have to manually call methods to store() or restore() certain states. To detect an undoable action, Backbone.Undo.js listens to the events Backbone triggeres automatically. You don't have to do anything.

• Magic Condensation

  In a more complex web application the click of a button might trigger several changes which dispatch several events which in Backbone.Undo.js are turned into several undoable actions. If the user wants to undo what he caused with his click he wants to undo all of those actions. Backbone.Undo.js has an internal feature called Magic Condensation that detects actions that were created in one flow and undoes or redoes all of them.

Who should use Backbone.Undo.js

Backbone.Undo.js is a simple undo manager that should be used by rather simple web applications. It has mechanisms that makes it extensible and suitable for more complex applications. However, it might not be adequate for very large-scale applications with tens of thousands of lines of code.

Getting started

Backbone.Undo.js depends on Backbone.js which depends on underscore.js (or lowdash.js). Make sure to include those two files before Backbone.Undo.js:

<script src="underscore.js"></script>
<script src="backbone.js"></script>
<!-- Backbone.Undo.js is included *after* Backbone and Underscore -->
<script src="Backbone.Undo.js"></script>

Backbone Version

Backbone.Undo.js was developed for Backbone 1.0.0 or higher.

Underscore Version

Backbone.Undo.js was developed for Underscore 1.4.4 or higher.

Setting up your UndoManager

In order to set up your UndoManager you have to do the following steps:

1. Instantiate your UndoManager

   var myUndoManager = new Backbone.UndoManager();

2. Register the models and collections you want to observe

   var model = new Backbone.Model, collection = new Backbone.Collection; myUndoManager.register(model, collection); // You can pass several objects as arguments

   // You can prepare your objects here. Changes won't be tracked yet. model.set("foo", "bar"); collection.add([{"something": "blue"}]); // These changes can't be undone.

3. Start tracking the changes

   myUndoManager.startTracking(); // Every change that happens to the model and the collection can now be undone

If you already have the objects you want to observe when you instantiate the undo manager or if you don't need to prepare them you can use the shorthand way of passing them on instantiation:

// Shorthand
var myUndoManager = new Backbone.UndoManager({
	track: true, // changes will be tracked right away
	register: [model, collection] // pass an object or an array of objects
})

Backbone.Undo.js methods

Methods you can call on an instance of Backbone.Undo:

Constructor new Backbone.Undo([object]);

The constructor can be called with an optional argument. The argument is an object of attributes. Each attribute is optional and has a default value.

var undoManager = new Backbone.Undo; // possible, because the argument is optional

var undoManager = new Backbone.Undo({
    maximumStackLength: 30, // default: Infinity; Maximum number of undoable actions
    track: true, // default: false; If true, changes will be tracked right away
    register: myObj // default: undefined; Pass the object or an array of objects that you want to observe
});

register undoManager.register(obj, [obj, ...]);

Your undo manager must know the objects whose actions should be undoable/redoable. Therefore you have to register these objects:

var model = new Backbone.Model;
var collection = new Backbone.Collection;
undoManager.register(model, collection);

The register-method doesn't check whether the object is an instance of Backbone.Model or Backbone.Collection. That makes it possible to bind other objects which as well. However, make sure they have an on() and an off() method and trigger an "all" event in the fashion of Backbone's "all" event.

unregister undoManager.unregister(obj, [obj, ...]);

Previously registered objects can be unregistered using the unregister() method. Changes to those objects can't be undone after they have been unregistered.

var myModel = new Backbone.Model;
undoManager.register(myModel);
undoManager.startTracking();
myModel.set("foo", "bar"); // Can be undone
undoManager.unregister(myModel);
myModel.set("foo", "baz"); // Can't be undone

startTracking undoManager.startTracking();

Your undo-manager won't store any changes that happen to registered objects until you called startTracking().

var myModel = new Backbone.Model;
undoManager.register(myModel);
myModel.set("foo", "bar"); // Can't be undone because tracking changes didn't start yet
undoManager.startTracking();
myModel.set("foo", "baz"); // Can be undone

stopTracking undoManager.stopTracking();

If you want to stop tracking changes for whatever reason, you can do that by calling stopTracking()

myModel.set("foo", 1);
undoManager.startTracking();
myModel.set("foo", 2);
undoManager.stopTracking();
myModel.set("foo", 3);
undoManager.undo(); // "foo" is 1 instead of 2, because the last change wasn't tracked
// btw: You shouldn't call `undo` within your code. See 'Problems that may occur'

undo undoManager.undo();

The method to undo the last set of actions is undo(). It undoes all actions that happened within one call cycle. That's why you shouldn't and can't call undo() within your code to undo actions. See 'Problems that may occur' for more information.

redo undoManager.redo();

The method to redo an undone set of actions is redo(). Like undo() it redoes all actions that happened within one call cycle. See 'Problems that may occur' for more information.

Supported Events

Backbone.Undo.js uses Backbone-Events to generate the undo-actions. It has built-in support for the following events

• add When a model is added to a collection
• remove When a model is removed from a collection
• reset When a collection is reset and all models are replaced by new models (or no models) at once
• change When an attribute of a model was changed

Supporting other events

If you want to generate undo-actions when custom or other Backbone-events are triggered, you can do so by extending Backbone.Undo. Use the static method Backbone.Undo.addUndoType():

addUndoType

Backbone.Undo.addUndoType(type, callbacks);
// or
Backbone.Undo.addUndoType(types);

An undo-type generates the data of an undo-action for a specific event and has an undo and redo method which know how to undo and redo the action. With the addUndoType() method you can add or overwrite one or more of these undo-types. To understand how this works you have to know the structure of an undo-type:

• type is the name of the event the undo-type is made for. For example "add", "change" or "reset".
• on is the function that generates the data necessary to undo or redo the action. It returns an object with the keys "object", "before" and "after"
• undo is the function which executes the actual undoing. It gets object, before and after the values on had returned as arguments as well as a copy of the whole object on returned in case it needs more data.
• redo is the function which executes the actual redoing. As undo it gets object, before, after and a copy of the object on returned as arguments.

An example. If we want to add the undo-type "reset" (which is already built-in) we can do the following:

Backbone.Undo.addUndoType("reset", {
    "on": function (collection, options) {
        // The "on" method gets the arguments the type (here: "reset") 
        // would get if it was bound to the object
        return {
            object: collection,
            before: options.previousModels,
            after: _.clone(collection.models) // We use a copy of the current state instead of storing a reference
        }
    },
    "undo": function (collection, before, after) {
        // Reset the collection with the previous models 
        collection.reset(before);
    },
    "redo": function (collection, before, after) {
        collection.reset(after);
     }
});

You can also define several undo-types by passing an object to addUndoType

Backbone.Undo.addUndoType({
	"reset": {...},
	"add": {...},
	"customevent": {...}
});

Problems that may occur

Backbone.Undo.js is not made to be called within your code. It has an internal mechanism which figures out which Undo-Actions were generated in the same call cycle. This mechanism is great for usability (see above, Advantages of Backbone.Undo.js). However this mechanism makes it impossible to call undo() or redo() within a codeblock. Imagine this:

model.get("foo"); // "bar"

// Several changes:
model.set("foo", "baz");
model.set("foo", "qux");
model.set("foo", 42);
model.set("foo", {})

// One call to `undo`:
myUndoManager.undo();
model.get("foo"); // Is "bar" instead of 42

Calling undo() resets "foo" to "bar" instead of 42, because it had figured out that the four sets happened in one call cycle. If you want to call undo() within your code and each time only want to undo the latest change you have to call the changes to the model asynchronously.

model.get("foo");

// Several changes:
_.defer(function () {
    model.set("foo", "baz");
    
    _.defer(function () {
        model.set("foo", "qux");
        
        _.defer(function () {
            model.set("foo", 42);
            
            _.defer(function () {
                model.set("foo", {});
                
                myUndoManager.undo();
                model.get("foo") // 42
                
                myUndoManager.undo();
                model.get("foo") // "qux"
                
                myUndoManager.undo();
                model.get("foo") // "baz"
                
                myUndoManager.undo();
                model.get("foo") // "bar"
            })
        })
    })
})

Obviously noone would ever do that. In fact you also shouldn't do that: Your webapp shouldn't have any reference to the undo-manager within your code. Try to develop it independently from the undo-manager and then add an undo-manager-controller which for example binds the undo/redo-calls to Shortcuts like ctrl+Z.

License (MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2013 Oliver Sartun

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.