BackboneJS + Codeigniter RESTful API - How do I pass $startdate and $enddate - php

Question

I have a Backbone App with Codeingiter as Backend. I use the RESTful API setup to pass data back and forth between these to Frameworks.
Now I want to have a View which shows me the "newest followers", for that I created an API like this:
public function new_artist_followers_get($start_date, $end_date)
{
$this->load->database();
$sql = "SELECT users.img_name FROM artist_followers INNER JOIN artists ON artists.artist_id = artist_followers.artist_id INNER JOIN users ON users.user_id = artist_followers.user_id
WHERE artist_followers.artist_id = artists.artist_id AND date_time BETWEEN '$start_date' AND '$end_date' LIMIT 20";
$query = $this->db->query($sql);
$data = $query->result();
if($data) {
$this->response($data, 200);
} else {
$this->response(array('error' => 'Couldn\'t find any artist followers!'), 404);
}
}
My issue is that I'm not really sure how to pass the dates to my Backbone frontend? Do I have to do it somehow like this?:
NewFollowers.NewFollowersCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
url: function() {
return '/projects/testproject/index.php/api/testfile/new_artist_followers/'+ this.artist_id + this.startdate + this.enddate;
}
});
Normally, I fetch an API exactly like in the example above, just without the this.startdate and this.enddate and then in my MainView i gather everything, where I for each API/Collection do this (in this case an artist biography):
beforeRender: function() {
var artistbioCollection = new Artistbio.ArtistbioCollection();
artistbioCollection.artist_id = this.artist_id;
this.insertView('.artistBio', new Artistbio.View({collection: artistbioCollection}));
artistbioCollection.fetch();
....etc. etc. ...
}
So can anyone help me out?

Answer 1

Backbone.Collection fetch method accepts extra parameters, they should be passed like this:
artistbioCollection.fetch({
data: {
start_date: this.startdate,
end_date: this.enddate
}
});
It is in Backbone documentation
So here, data is the same property as jQuery.ajax data property, you can then grab these values server-side as usual.
As fetch perfoms a GET request, all parameters passed to data will be appended to query string

Answer 2

You should use URI templates to define the URI on the server side, like so:
http://example.com/api{/artist,id}/followers{?stardate,enddate}
After that you can use for example this library to fill this template on the client side with params. You can add a custom setter for those params, for example (not tested):
NewFollowers.NewFollowersCollection = Backbone.Collection.extend({
url: function() {
return URI.expand("http://example.com/api{/artist,artistId}/followers{?startDate,endDate}", this.params).href();
},
setParams: function (artist, start, end){
this.params = {
artistId: artist.get("id"),
startDate: start,
endDate: end
};
}
});
Be aware, that this is not a complete REST solution. By REST you get hypermedia responses, which contain links. One of those links can contain the actual URI template and a parameter description. So your client is completely decoupled from the URI structure, it does not know how to build an URI, but it knows how to evaluate an URI template, which is a standard solution. You decouple the client from the implementation of the service using standard solutions, this is called the uniform interface constraint of REST.