Backbone with a tree view widget
I'm evaluating the Backbone javascript framework for use in a project that will display a hierarchical model in a tree view widget (think the Windows file browser).
I love how Backbone thinks about the world. However, there's a lot of coding involved before I get to a proof of concept that has Backbone actually receiving a hierarchical model from a server and updating a tree widget. I've seen there's various solutions for representing deep data structures with Backbone, but I'm wondering... has anyone actually done this?
Just knowing that it's possible would be a help. Actually naming the tree view UI component and pointers for making data hierarchical in Backbone would be even better. A bit of sample code would be amazingly fantastic.
As far as data size, tree will run 100's of nodes (folders) with low 1000's of leaf items (documents), and it would be nice to progressively load the data (say, one folder at a time as the user clicks in), though that's probably not a showstopper.
Thanks!
Answer
one option if you don't want to travel down the hierarchical data-set path, is to use a Nested Set (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_set_model). this allows you to store the entire collection in a single array (or list or whatever you want to call it) and use a "left" and "right" value to determine the structure and hierarchy of the list.
if i remember right, this technique was originally build to optimize data storage and queries in a relational database. however, i've used it a number of times in C#/Winforms applications, to avoid having a recursive hierarchy of data, and it worked well.
an implementation of this in javascript should be pretty easy, but i don't know how well it would perform with a large list.