Backbone Model - Extending Api Calls

I'm working on my first nodejs/backbone project. What I need to do is to extend user model api with additional methods. As REST uses universal post/get/put request, how do you exte

Solution 1:

Why not add block and deactivate attributes to your model, then just use standard REST / CRUD API calls.

Then your actions block and deactivate would just be standard model updates, with logic to handle blocked and active model states in your API methods.

define(["jquery", "backbone"],
function($, Backbone) {
    var User = Backbone.Model.extend({
        urlRoot: '/user',

        defaults: {
            username: '',
            password: '',
            email: '',
            blocked: false,
            active: true
        },

        block: function () {
            this.set('blocked', true);
            this.save();
        },

        deactivate: function () {
            this.set('active', false);
            this.save();
        },

    });
    return User;
}
);

EDIT - Based on your comment, the need to distinguish between updates

If you need to distinguish between field updates on the server, in order to run route specific validation for example. Then you're probably going to need to call custom routes for each specific action. A neat way of doing this would be to override the url during the call to save the model.

An updated model example.

define(["jquery", "backbone"],
function($, Backbone) {
    var User = Backbone.Model.extend({
        urlRoot: '/user',

        defaults: {
            username: '',
            password: '',
            email: '',
            blocked: false,
            active: true
        },

        block: function () {
            this.set('blocked', true);
            this.save(this, { url: '/user/block' });
        },

        deactivate: function () {
            this.set('active', false);
            this.save(this, { url: '/user/deactivate' });
        },

    });
    return User;
}
);

Then you would have the following routes

app.put('/user', userController.register);
app.post('/user', userController.update);
app.get('/user', userController.list);
app.delete('/user', userController.delete);
app.post('/user/block', userController.block);
app.post('/user/deactivate', userController.deactivate);