no-el-assign.md

Prevent assigning el or $el inside views (no-el-assign)

Setting this.el or this.$el can cause issues, since Backbone will not automatically bind events to the element. Use setElement function instead which will cache a reference to an element and bind all events.

Rule Details

The following patterns are considered warnings:

Backbone.View.extend({
    initialize: function() {
        this.$el = $(".test");
    }
});

Backbone.View.extend({
    initialize: function() {
        this.el = $(".test")[0];
    }
});

The following patterns are not warnings:

Backbone.View.extend({
    initialize: function() {
        this.setElement($(".test"));
    }
});

When Not To Use It

If you always call delegateEvents manually, you can still set this.el directly.

Further Reading

BackboneJS Documentation